[Highlands Fishing] Highland Cattle - How to breed and care for cattle

In this tutorial, we teach you everything you need to know about highland cattle: from feeding to breeding, we guide you through every step.

What You Need To Know About Highland Cattle

• After 18 months, they are able to reproduce.
• They can produce slurry and manure with the right equipment.
• Like cows, highland cattle can be fed with Total Mixed Ration (TMR).
• Highland cattle are used for breeding only.
• Like cows, highland cattle require a lot of equipment. Therefore, they are more suitable for a bit more experienced players.

Housing Options

You need a safe space for your cattle. Depending on your account balance, you have a few options. Just keep in mind, if you want to keep dairy cows and highland cattle in one barn, you need to buy a dairy barn:

• Cow Pasture: This is the cheapest option. You need to provide feed and water. With this building, you won't get any manure or slurry. 
• Cow Barn: Here, you only need to provide feed. You also gain slurry and, if you provide straw, manure.
• Cow Barn (large): Like with the smaller versions, you only need to feed your animals. You also gain slurry and, if you provide straw, manure.
• Cow Barn With Feeding Robot: The most expensive housing option for your cattle, but also with a nice addition. You need to provide feed, but you don’t have to mix the TMR yourself. Just deliver the ingredients and the robot does the rest.

Feeding Options

To keep your highland cattle healthy and happy, you need to feed them. With the meadow that you can plant in the fence, you get up to 40% of your feeding done. For the rest, you have these options:

• Grass: can be grown and harvested on your fields.
• Hay: just turn your mown grass with a tedder to dry it. Afterward, it can be fed to your cattle. You can buy hay bales at the shop. 
• Silage: is fermented feed. You need to compress grass or chaff in a bunker silo or wrap your grass bales. If you don’t have the time, you can also buy silage bales at the shop.
• TMR: is made in forage mixers with hay, straw, silage, and mineral feed. 

You don’t need to worry if you don’t feed your animals. They just stop breeding. 

Producing TMR

TMR is always produced with hay, straw, silage and mineral feed. You have two options to produce TMR:

• A: Mix it yourself in a forage mixer wagon: 
  Load all the bales and pallets into the wagon with your tractor and the front loader attachment. Keep an eye on the info box of the wagon to get the right ratio. 
• B: Use the barn with a feeding robot:
  Every ingredient has a designated place of delivery. You can stock them up to certain amount. Hay, straw, and silage are placed on the left side of the robot. Mineral feed on the right side. Once it is filled up, the robot takes all it needs, mixes it, and feeds it to your cattle.

Breeding Highland Cattle

Whether cattle reproduce depends on three factors:

• Age: Cattle mature after 18 months and can then give birth to offspring.
• Space: There needs to be space for new cattle in your barn.
• Health: The Health of your cattle has to be at 100%. You can achieve this by feeding the animals regularly.

What You Need For Highland Cattle

We’ll cover the necessary equipment in this chapter - feel free to skip ahead if you are looking for an instruction on how to handle your cattle.

• You need a tractor with a front loader attachment and a bale spike to handle your machines and transport resources.
• You need a barn. 
• You need a manure heap. If you have laid straw in the barn, cattle will produce manure, that needs to be stored. Place the heap near the stable.
• You need a liquid manure tank. Cattle produce slurry, too. It's collected in the liquid manure tank. Every barn has a small tank for slurry. If you have a lot of cattle, you may need more. 
• You need a manure spreader/tank to either spread the manure on your fields or transport it to the point of sale.
• You need a slurry spreader/tank to either spread the slurry on your fields or transport it to the place of sale.

How To Breed Highland Cattle

Got everything you need? Then let's get to work!

1. Buying a Barn: Choose a building of your liking and place it on your own ground. You can customize the outdoor area of your barn, if you want to do so.
2. Buying Animals: You can choose from highland cattle of different ages. The younger they are, the longer it takes for them to create offsprings. Don’t fill your barn to the limit. Otherwise, there is no space for your animals to reproduce.
   • Deliver or drive by yourself?: You can buy cattle at your barn, but you have to pay a small fee for the delivery. Alternatively, if you have bought a special trailer, you can drive it to the cattle dealership and buy cattle on-site to transport them yourself. We recommend buying them at the barn. It is cheaper and faster.
3. Feeding your animals: Deliver the feed of your choice to the designated area of your barn.
4. Provide straw:  Spread straw inside the barn for your animals to produce manure.
5. Selling Animals: Sell your highland cattle. Manure and slurry can either be used to fertilize your fields to increase the yield of your crops, or you can sell it to the biogas plant.

Well done!

You successfully bred highland cattle. Head back to the Academy for more tutorials, and keep on farming!