Characteristics
The British White has shortish white hair, and has dark points – usually black, but sometimes red. The coloured points include the ears, feet, eyelids, nose and often even teats. It is naturally polled (hornless), medium-sized and compactly built. There may be some coloured spots on the body fur, and the skin beneath the fur is usually coloured (grey or reddish), or pink with coloured spots. The colour-pointed pattern is found in many unrelated cattle breeds throughout the world – it is an extreme pale form of the similarly widespread colour-sided or lineback pattern.
The red-pointed variant shows in about two percent of British Whites, but since red colouration is genetically recessive to black in cattle, many of the black-pointed animals also carry the red allele.
The colour-pointed pattern shows strongly in crosses with other breeds, often with additional dark spotting if the other parent was solid-coloured. As in other cattle the polled characteristic is dominant over horns, so first crosses are also polled.
The breed is hardy and thrifty, and the animals readily graze rough vegetation such as rushes, nettles or heather, and they keenly browse many trees and shrubs. They rarely have calving difficulties.
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