The Tetford herd is a family business

The county may well be known for it’s Lincolnshire Red beef but Charles Sutcliffe raises Longhorn Cattle, a specialist breed.

The Tetford herd was established in 1993 by Charles and his wife Debbie. Since then the herd has gone from strength to strength with two Royal Show Male Champions: Tetford Clansman and Tetford Kingpin.

The Longhorn cattle are an extremely docile breed and this was evident upon walking through the herd. The cows and calves stayed bedded down while we walked around with Charles.

The herd means a lot to Charles, he raises each calf for about 22 months until it’s ready to be taken to slaughter. He often drives the cattle to the abattoir himself. This is a difficult task after being attached for so long (rearing some of the cattle by hand) but he does this for a reason.

Mass farming and transportation to the abattoir puts a great strain on cattle. The adrenaline from stress and other factors affect the quality of the meat. Calm transportation allows for the beef to be unaffected by these, resulting in a better quality.

Charles chose to raise and breed Longhorns because of their mild nature and the quality of the meat. Longhorns don’t need to build large layers of external fat before they begin forming “intramuscular fat”. This allows for the marbling which is responsible for succulence, tenderness and of course flavour.

The beef from Tetford was voted Britain’s best but Charles isn’t certain how this happened. “I’m not completely sure it is that much better. It’s one man, or in the case of this competition, half a dozen’s people opinion on the day, but no two animals are the same so no two carcasses are the same. It’s just on that day ours was tastier, tenderer and more succulent than anything else they tried. I happen to know that some of what they tried was bloody awful but there is a lot of good beef out there, it’s just finding it and being able to get back and get it again or similar to it again.”

“There’s not much good beef in the supermarkets, not necessarily because what they started with was inferior but you can’t produce anything good, be it meat, vegetables, furniture, anything without striving to achieve  perfection and there are a lot of elements that make up good meat.

“Start with a good breed, which I believe we’ve got. You give it a stress free life as possible because stress produces adrenaline which doesn’t improve meat quality. Every day of an animal’s life has an influence on the end product, some days have a much bigger influence than others. Diet, okay they’re out there and eat grass but supplementary feeding is important.”

The beef  from the Tetford Herd is sold in the family butchers, Meridian Meats, in Louth where son Jim Sutcliffe is the manager.