Mooooooooving cattle at the Steyning Downland Scheme

Mooooooooving cattle at the Steyning Downland Scheme

September 22, 2017

Written by Rebekah Smith, Assistant Ranger

The Steyning Downland Scheme (SDS) is a charitable project that aims to engage the local community and young people in enhancing the natural beauty of 165 acres of the South Downs National Park for the benefit of the community, the land and its wildlife.

Recently, our Ranger team based in Singleton helped to move a herd of grazing Dexter cattle to a different area of the site, to continue their very useful job of munching down on the encroaching tor-grass and scrub. To the team’s relief, the cows were very well behaved ensuring a smooth and easy process, no escapees having to be chased down Steyning high-street!

The cows had been hard at work on Pepperscombe over the summer and they’re now on to pastures new on the grasslands adjacent to the rifle range. They will gorge themselves on the vegetation that has grown there over the summer.

Until quite recently the land had been grazed for centuries. Then, during the 1980s it became increasingly difficult to graze the ancient chalk grassland sward, due to changing agricultural practices and vandalism. Grazing became sporadic and then stopped altogether and the land fell into disuse.

Since the SDS became a UK registered charity in 2009 the project has been going from strength to strength and now rotational grazing is part of the ongoing work to manage the important chalk downland on site. The cows do a great job at keeping back invading scrub and thick sward which opens up space for chalk grassland species to grow, this in turn supports the wealth of fauna associated with these sorts of habitats.