Meet the former ICI steelworker who has become one of Yorkshire's cattle breeding experts

There has been a quiet revolution in UK pedigree cattle breeding for the past couple of decades with several breeds on the increase and one to have gradually risen, particularly for its maternal and commercial traits, has been the Salers from the Massif Central region of France.
Chris Berry
By Chris Berry
Published 27th May 2023, 06:00 BST

Terence Pye and his wife Jane established their Rigel pedigree herd in 1991. They took on their 210-acre Leven Fields farm at Middleton on Leven near Yarm in April 1991. Today they have a herd of 70 pedigree Salers. Terence is devoted to the breed and to its calling card attribute of easy calving.

“In terms of my experience with the breed, I always say it does what it says on the tin. It’s a breed that absolutely delivers what we were promised right at the beginning in terms of easy calving.

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“I’m now very much an ambassador for calving ease within the cattle industry because I’ve come to the view that assisted calvings are virtually avoidable, that there should be very few, and yet still, most farmers regard it as a routine activity.

Terence Pye with his wife Jane and daughter Emma Denton pictured with a Saler Bull at Leven Fields Farm, Middleton on LevenTerence Pye with his wife Jane and daughter Emma Denton pictured with a Saler Bull at Leven Fields Farm, Middleton on Leven
Terence Pye with his wife Jane and daughter Emma Denton pictured with a Saler Bull at Leven Fields Farm, Middleton on Leven

“This business of the Salers calving themselves has proven spectacularly successful in the increase in the breed’s number. We keep figures that go back over our 30-plus years and our Salers and Salers-crossed cows have a totally unassisted calving rate of 99.1 per cent.

“That figure includes everything from backwards calving to twins. We’ve never had a big calf stuck in a small cow, which is what lots of farmers are still pulling out. Those who are assisting a quarter to a third of their cows in calving will find it is largely because they’ve got the combination of calf size and cow pelvis wrong. That’s why they’re still having to hoik them out. It simply doesn’t need to be that way.

“I was invited to speak at the British Cattle Breeders Conference this January and that was my topic, encouraging breeders to think about choices of sire and dam to get to the 99 per cent which they should be able to.

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Terence says the Salers is now the UK’s eighth biggest breed in terms of breeding cattle in the UK and that it is likely to move further up the table in future, all primarily down to its pelvis size and easy calving, something that farmer