HighPark colour in Australia: what a standard would say

There is no HighPark association in Australia. No herd book, no inspection, no written colour standard. That is worth saying plainly at the top, because it means anyone can call anything a HighPark, and some people do.

What follows is not an official standard. It is what we breed to, what we look for when we buy, and what we think the word ought to mean here. If a standard is ever written, we would like it to look something like this.

The pattern is the breed

Strip away the arguments about parentage and a HighPark is one thing: a Highland-coated animal carrying a white body with coloured points.

That is the whole definition. Not a particular percentage, not a particular pedigree — a coat and a colour pattern. Our own HighParks are Highland over Galloway, which is the cross we have settled on and the one we will keep using. Everything below is detail.

What counts as a point

On a correct animal the pigment sits in a predictable set of places:

• Ears — usually the most strongly marked, and the first thing you can read on a wet calf.
• Muzzle and nose — a dark ring around the nose, ideally solid rather than patchy.
• Eyes — the "goggles", a pigmented patch around each eye.
• Feet and lower legs — often fading upward rather than stopping in a hard line.
• Teats — frequently pigmented, and worth checking on a heifer you intend to breed.

The body between those points should be white or near-white. A little ticking through the neck and shoulder is common and, in our view, not a fault.

Pigment is not decoration

This is the part that gets treated as cosmetic and should not be.

An animal with a white face and no pigment around the eyes and muzzle is an animal that sunburns. In Australian conditions that means peeling noses through summer, and over years it means a materially higher risk of eye and muzzle cancers — the same reason white-faced commercial cattle are watched for it here, and the same reason processors dock for it.

So when we say we select for solid, well-defined points, that is not showring talk. Pigment where the sun hits is a welfare trait wearing a colour trait's clothing. If you are choosing between two animals and one has a weak, broken eye patch, that is a real reason to take the other one.

Look for pigment that goes all the way around the eye rather than sitting above it like an eyebrow, and for a nose ring that is continuous rather than freckled. On a bull in particular, since he will pass it to a great many calves.

Point colour

The points themselves come in more than one colour, and all of them are legitimate:

• Black points — the most common and the most photographed. Highest contrast, and it holds up well as the animal ages.
• Red points — warmer and softer against the white. Less common here.
• Dun and silver points — the Highland dilution acting on the point colour. Subtle, and they can look almost washed out on a young animal before deepening.

We would not rank these. A crisply marked red-pointed animal is a better HighPark than a poorly marked black-pointed one.

Horned and polled are both correct

People arrive expecting horns, because the Highland half is what they have seen in photographs. In practice you will meet both here, and the reason is the Galloway side: Galloway is a naturally polled breed, so a first-cross calf very often comes through polled, or with scurs rather than proper horn. Breed back toward Highland in later generations and horns reappear in a share of the calves.

Neither is more correct than the other, and we would not mark an animal down for either. What matters is that you are told which you are buying before you commit, because it changes your feeders, your gate widths, your handling and your float. Ask, and ask again about scurs, which are the awkward middle case — loose horn that can snap and bleed.

Where the white-and-points pattern comes from

The white body with coloured points is not unique to one breed. In Australia it reaches Highland crosses by a few different routes:

• White Galloway — white bodied with coloured points, hardy, polled, and the route we use.
• British White — polled, and the same pointed arrangement.
• Speckle Park — specifically the white park pattern, which is one of the recognised colour patterns within that breed.
• True White Park — genuinely rare in this country.

All of them carry the pattern. What matters is that the buyer is told which one is behind the animal in front of them, because the breeds differ in frame, temperament and coat, and those differences turn up in the calves long after the colour has been admired.

What is not a HighPark

The pattern rules things out, and this is where the term gets stretched:

• Leopard and heavily speckled — spots scattered across the body rather than pigment concentrated at the extremities. A striking animal, and a different one.
• Roan bodies — an even mix of white and coloured hair through the body reads as roan, not as pointed.
• Belted — a white band on a coloured body is the opposite arrangement.
• Solid — whatever its parentage.

An animal can carry all the right breeding and not show the pattern. The pattern decides.

The Highland half still has to show up

Colour is only half of it. A HighPark should still read as a Highland from across the paddock: the double coat, its length and texture, the fringe over the eyes, the width of bone.

This is where a first cross can disappoint. The Galloway coat is dense and weatherproof but short, so an F1 usually carries less length and a shorter fringe than a purebred Highland. It generally improves when you breed back toward the Highland side, and it is the reason we judge coat on an animal's own parents rather than on a photograph of somebody else's.

How it passes on

In practice the pointed pattern behaves as a strong dominant. Put a well-marked pointed animal over a Highland and a good proportion of calves show points in some form. Not all of them, and the quality of the marking varies a great deal within one drop — smudgy eye patches, split nose rings and heavy body ticking all turn up in calves whose parents are correct.

Nobody publishes their strike rate, and it is a fair thing to ask a breeder directly: of the calves you dropped last season, how many came through as you would want them?

Judge the adult, not the calf

Points sharpen and pigment deepens over the first year or two, and body colour shifts as the calf coat is replaced. A calf that looks smudgy at three months is often clean at eighteen. The reverse happens too.

If you are buying young, ask to see photographs of the sire and dam as adults rather than deciding on the calf in front of you. Ask for them in ordinary light, standing square, and from both sides.

What we do here

We run Highland over Galloway on 137 acres at Freshwater Creek, and we select first for solid pigment at the eyes and muzzle, then for a clean white body with well-defined points, then for the Highland coat. Temperament sits alongside all of it, not behind it — our cattle are handled daily and worked through the yards as part of routine, which is how we find out early which ones are sensible.

We would not sell an animal as a HighPark if it did not carry the pattern, and we say the breeding on every animal's profile. The name describes the look. The profile tells you what is behind it.