Sarita Lavender
The best beef breed in Africa in contrast, aidan Hartley’s cattle graze freely on the open range: ‘get on a horse at our house and you could ride to ethiopia and never meet a fence.’ aidan lives on 2,500-acre farm in laikipia, the plateau north of mount Kenya that falls away into the rift Valley, which he first saw as a boy while travelling with his father. ‘i remember a red dirt track cut through wilderness and in front of us a bull giraffe, all horns and dappled flanks, galloping away into the waita-bit thorn groves white with scented blossom. i fell head over heels in love with the place. the road to home rises up on to high plains that look out over the land towards mount Kenya and when i see that my heart sings.’ aidan worked on a laikipia farm during his gap year before going up to balliol ‘and already my compass had found true north’. after oxford (and then the school of oriental and african studies) he returned to the continent, but while working as a foreign correspondent for reuters and newspapers he only ever saw the plateau from aircraft. then in 2004 he and his wife, claire, had the chance to buy some virgin bush. they lived in a tent for two years and built a house from mud, local stone and thatch. ‘our aim has always been to conserve the wildlife, the grasslands and forest, but Kenya is a poor country where the land must produce food, so we bought in livestock. that’s how our boran stud began.’ boran cattle, aidan explains, are probably the best indigenous beef and dual-purpose breed in africa: The Boran is a Zebu breed (Bos indicus) that originated from the Somalis, Oromo and Boran people of the Liban plateau in southern Ethiopia. For 1,000 years they honed the genetics of Boran-type cattle, which commercial ranchers adapted to modern requirements. Early European ranchers bought them from Somali traders and bred out weaknesses, and before the Great War Shorthorn bulls from England were imported to improve the Boran Zebu type for dairy. For beef, the ranchers left them mainly as pure Borans, working to better their natural qualities: hardiness, heavy weight gain, docility, fertility. for aidan and claire, the objective is beef. after a decade of investing in top-quality genetics, they have a breeding herd of around 80 cows, and aidan hopes to show their first cattle at the livestock breeders show in nairobi in 2015.
Our ultimate aim is to rear pedigree Boran cattle of superior genetics to improve the national herd in Kenya and for export to countries around Africa, particularly post-conflict economies that aim to up their ranching with the special qualities of the Boran. I see our mission as one of providing food for the growing African market which, as the middle classes grow, wants to buy more beef. This is all part of the miracle sweeping our continent, in which Africa’s economic growth is the Next Big Thing.
A great feeling
but if breeding animals is challenging, in Kenya or in burgundy, both men speak of the rewards. andrew’s are ‘the taste of a plate of home-reared, home-cured bacon or roast pork and the great feeling of being outside, connected to the animals and rearing them well.’ aidan appreciates the outdoors and the company of animals too: together with the hard labour that life on a ranch involves, they are a solace to him. He has paid for the farm by continuing to work as a journalist and making documentaries for channel 4 television in mongolia, but, aidan says, ‘You don’t ranch Yemen, the nuba mountains, somalia, cattle for an easy life or that absurd colombia and other places. it has notion of “profit”. every day is a been ‘wonderfully interesting’, but drama.’ laikipia has a there have been times healthy population of when he has been ‘a bit ‘You don’t ranch predators – lion, hyena, worn out by conflict wild hunting dog, cheetah, and crisis’. at such times cattle for an easy leopard – so all livestock life or that absurd going back to the farm – are brought into a night ‘switch off the phone, dip notion of “profit”. cattle, dose sheep, weed enclosure of thorn or dry stone walls, called a boma. vegetables, chew fat with Every day is a ‘i’ve had a cow devoured by shepherds, walk in the heat’ drama.’ lion on the croquet lawn in – is an important part of front of the house, where his cure. i had put her to convalesce, and do their lives now have anything recently a leopard leapt into the boma to do with having been at balliol? at midnight and consumed a calf ‘intellectually balliol prepared me for minutes after it was born, attracted the road in africa as a correspondent, i suppose by the scent of blood.’ where i had to tackle big questions the biggest problem is cattle in life,’ says aidan, and he thinks the rustling. ‘samburu youths come intellectual journey he and claire at us like border reivers and it’s a made at oxford as english students cultural practice that has gone toxic helps sustain them in their life in a with the appearance of the aK-47 quiet place that is far away from many semi-automatic rifle.’ once a rustler of their friends. andrew: ‘er, not at all ambushed aidan’s vehicle, putting – that i can think of, at least!’ several bullets into the metal a few feet in front of him. with lack of Aidan Hartley writes about his education being a big problem, aidan farm in his ‘Wild Life’ column aims to build a primary school for for The Spectator: see www. local children near the farm. ‘i am no spectator.co.uk/life/wildstarry-eyed philanthropist: i’m hoping life. You can read more about that these kids will opt to become Andrew and Sarita Lavender’s brain surgeons and rocket scientists pigs at www.libertypig.com. when they grow up instead of raiding my cattle!’ issue no.20 June 2014
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