Cedar Pond FarmsThe fringe is not decoration
A Highland’s fringe — the "dossan" — keeps flies off the eyes and snow out of them. It is why the breed does not need the ear tags and sprays a short-haired cow does, and why you should never trim one for a photograph.
The fringe, the horns, the ginger coat against a green hill. What the photographs do not tell you is that a Highland cow will hum at you when it decides you are worth acknowledging — and that standing still is the whole trick. Here is what we have learned keeping a herd of them in the Smoky Mountain foothills.
A Highland’s fringe — the "dossan" — keeps flies off the eyes and snow out of them. It is why the breed does not need the ear tags and sprays a short-haired cow does, and why you should never trim one for a photograph.
Both cows and bulls carry them, and the blood vessels running through the core shed heat in summer. A Highland with its head up and horns level is comfortable, not squaring up.
Humming, the double coat, how to read a horn for age, why they clear brambles better than a mower, and the one thing that actually makes a herd calm. Tell us where to send them and they appear right here, on this page.
Would rather meet one than read about one?