Queen's bull brings home top prize at the Royal Highland Show

The Queen may have had a less than successful Royal Ascot, with none of her horses winning a race, but 400 miles to the north another of her prized animals picked up a first-placed ribbon.

Gusgurlach of Balmoral, a three-year-old Highland cattle bull, won top prize at the Royal Highland Show for the second year in a row.

Gusgurlach is part of the Queen’s fold of cattle, which at the last count had more than 60 breeding cows and seven other bulls.

The Queen has been raising Highland cattle since 1953, repeatedly winning prizes for the quality of her livestock.

The tradition goes back to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s fascination with the Highlands. It was the 19th Century monarch who established the royal preference for distinctive red cattle, telling her breeders in the 1840s that she preferred the colour to black.

While this is Gusgurlach’s second time winning the top prize, it is his first in-person after last year’s event was held virtually due to the pandemic.

The prize bull was spotted out of a herd of 110 by Dochy Ormiston, the stock manager at the Queen’s Balmoral Estate.

The Queen’s only runner on the final day of Royal Ascot, King's Lynn, failed to win the Platinum Jubilee Stakes as a 40/1 outsider.

That made it the second year in a row that the monarch did not have a winner at the event. Her last successful race was in 2020 when Tactical won the Windsor Castle Stakes.

The Queen did not attend this year's races.