Allan Jackson has worked with 21 breeds of cattle and sheep over a career spanning more than five decades. He has shown champions at the Royal Highland, the Great Yorkshire, and the Royal Welsh shows. He runs Headlind Livestock Services from Woodyett Farm at Kirkfieldbank, Lanark — taking in bulls and cattle from clients across Scotland and beyond, getting them right for the show ring and the sale ring. The Scottish Farmer called him one of the stockmen of our time. His view on using supporting pedigree animals is simple: “It’s like a racing car. You can put ordinary oil in, but it won’t work as well as the correct product for the animal.”
Allan and his partner Senga Hamilton-Guy have been using Natural Stockcare’s ProbiVit-E and Supreme Finisher for the best part of 20 years. “I wouldn’t like to tell too many folk about it,” he says, “because it does a real job for me.”
What Headlind Does
Headlind is a dual operation. On the one hand, Allan and Senga run their own pedigree Beef Shorthorn herd — their bull Dunsyre Horatio has won at the Royal Highland, Great Yorkshire, and Royal Welsh — and in recent years have built the herd to the point of selling heifers for the first time. On the other hand, they run a cattle livery through Headlind Livestock Services — housing clients’ cattle, getting them on feed, building condition, and bringing them out at shows and sales.
Three purpose-built sheds have gone up at Woodyett since Allan and Senga arrived. Each has individual pens for bulls, with quarantine to protect the farm’s high health status, and a dedicated wash and trim area. Allan’s own saying sums up the philosophy: “It is not what they are — it is what you do with them.” What goes into the feed every day is as deliberate as anything else.
ProbiVit-E: Getting New Cattle on Their Feed
Bulls come in from mid-August. They arrive from different farms, off different feeds, after a journey. They are new to each other and new to the place. Getting them settled and eating quickly is everything.
“It’s all new to them,” says Allan. “We put in ProbiVit-E — we give them a full tube to start with, to settle them.”
ProbiVit-E is a probiotic and Vitamin E supplement. The active bacteria — Enterococcus faecium — helps restore the gut balance that travel and stress knock out of cattle. When a bull’s gut is unsettled, he is not eating properly, not drinking properly, and not putting on flesh. ProbiVit-E gets that sorted. Vitamin E supports the immune system through the same vulnerable window.
The change Allan sees in newly arrived cattle is clear and consistent. “It really relaxes them,” he says. “They go straight on — they look at the trailer, they come off the trailer again. They’re in their pens and they’re ready to eat when we want them to eat. They’re ready to drink when we want them to drink. It just settles their stomach.”
He keeps it running in the feed throughout the bulls’ stay — “all the time they’re actually in here, they’ll get a wee drop in their feed” — and has done for over 20 years. “I’d be annoyed if it ever went off the market,” he says. “It just does the job.”
Supreme Finisher: Putting Muscle and Flesh on Them
Once cattle are settled and eating, the work shifts to getting flesh and muscle on them ahead of shows and sales. Supreme Finisher is what Allan reaches for at that stage.
“We’ll watch the animals on their performance and Supreme Finisher — we’ll use it if we’re needing to get more muscle in them and more flesh on them. We try to use that as a tool and it works really well for us.”
This is where the racing car line comes in. “You can put ordinary oil in a racing car, but it won’t work as well as a good product — the correct product for the animal.” It is a straightforward way of saying that what you put into cattle determines what you get out of them, and cutting corners on supplementation is a false economy when the whole point is to have them looking their best on the day.
The results at Headlind back it up. In what Allan describes as a tremendous year, they won the male senior champion at the United Auctions bull sales for their own cattle, took the overall championship with an intermediate bull for a client, and sold 23 bulls — their own and clients’ combined — averaging just shy of £10,000 per head. For a 49-acre farm in South Lanarkshire, those are numbers that speak for themselves.
Twenty Years With ProbiVit-E and Supreme Finisher
Allan is not the sort of stockman who switches products for the sake of it. Two products, used for specific purposes, at the right times — that is how Headlind has operated for two decades. ProbiVit-E for getting newly arrived cattle settled and eating. Supreme Finisher for putting the flesh and muscle on them when it matters. Both chosen because they work, and kept because they keep working.
“I use what works,” he says. “I watch the animals on their performance. The products I’ve worked with over the years have done their job — I’m really pleased with them.”
To find out more about ProbiVit-E or Supreme Finisher, or to talk through what might work for your own cattle, get in touch with the Natural Stockcare team.
