Reference: F-HCS
Herdbook Hub runs the herdbook of F-HCS every day.
The society
The French Highland Cattle Society (F-HCS) was founded in 2008 by Highland cattle breeders. It keeps the French herdbook of the breed, true to the breed standard of the Highland Cattle Society in Scotland, and works to preserve the breed’s genetic diversity. It was approved as a breed society under Regulation (EU) 2016/1012 for Highland cattle on 23 October 2024. Its herdbook has a main section with four merit classes and two supplementary sections.
F-HCS also keeps the French herdbook of White Park cattle, approved on 2 October 2026. Both breeds run on the same Herdbook Hub installation.
132 breeders take part in the Highland breeding programme, and 70 of them have registered animals.
Herdbook Hub was developed for F-HCS. Eric Bautsch, who runs Herdbook Hub, is vice-president of F-HCS.
Before
The herdbook was kept in Excel spreadsheets, and every registration was typed by hand, which made errors easy to make and hard to find. French law also requires herdbook data to be recorded in the national cattle database (a French requirement, not an EU one). Without the software, everything would have had to be copied into it by hand a second time.
What F-HCS uses
- Zootechnical certificates
- Online registration requests with review stages
- The link to the French national cattle database
- Online membership and payment
- Animals for sale
- Competitions
Results
Figures from the initialisation report of the Highland herdbook:
| Females | Males | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main section (zootechnical certificate available) | 166 | 79 | 245 |
| Supplementary section A | 32 | 0 | 32 |
| Supplementary section B | 224 | 16 | 240 |
| Notified births, awaiting registration | 148 | 7 | 155 |
| Outside the breed standard | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Living animals in total | 570 | 103 | 673 |
635 of these animals were born in France. 38 were imported from the United Kingdom, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and are recorded with their foreign zootechnical certificates.
In their words
Our herdbook used to live in Excel spreadsheets, and every animal had to be typed into the national database again by hand. Now breeders send their requests online, the certificate is issued automatically once the animal has been through the assessment, and the data is sent to the national database every week, with no one lifting a finger. We spend less time on data entry, and much more on the breed.
– Émeric Deraedt, President, F-HCS