Andrew Arbuckleon Farming: Camera never lies – except during livestock shows

Show cattle and sheep are already being chosen, groomed and walked in readiness for the circuit.

All this goes on despite the owners claiming on show day, "Aye, he/she came straight out of the field this morning."

Such claims are taken with a pinch of the proverbial salt as they are often accompanied by details of the parentage of the successful animal and this can vary week by week.

What I believed was a constant of these shows has been the photographs of the various champions. There they stand, four square with their ears cocked forward and head held high.

I know as a reporter the great efforts that go into getting such pictures. Legs are moved an inch or two if they seem slightly out of line.

The head is lifted and turned slightly towards the camera and handkerchiefs are waved in front of the champion until he or she looks alert.

While all this pantomime is going on, the reporter waits for the all-important information on its breeding and previous successes.

With an awkward beast, the photographer always did have the fall back position of "I can sort it out in the laboratory", which I understood to mean the offending leg or ear could be painted out and then painted back in where it should have been.

There was also the option of taking out bits of the animal that might offend.

The "dark room" of one Scottish daily newspaper was always reported to be very busy during Perth bull sales week, when photographs of bulls with all their masculinity on show had to be doctored so readers were not offended by seeing testicles as they read the paper at the breakfast table.

Now it appears that, with digital photographs, the practice of enhancement is running riot.

A leg out of line? "We can just move that if you want."

An ear hanging limply? "No problem."

After admitting that it used to "touch up" a few livestock photographs in the pre-digital age, one of Scotland's farming trade papers has actually called for pictures of cows "as they really are".

This misses the point: that exhibitors do not want to see their sheep or cattle "as they really are" but as they would like them to be. "Take the blemishes out, please" has been the call for more than 200 years.

If you do not believe me, then look again at those paintings of pigs and sheep and cattle in the 18th-century, where they stand like big rectangles of solid flesh with tiny heads and feet.

Every pub in Olde England has walls full of such paintings. There must have been hundreds of people employed producing copies.

These are the first vanity images of livestock and they emerged after the breeders realised where the beef, mutton and pork was located.

If you were an artist in those days, then I suspect unless you "enhanced" the actual animal, the chances of getting commissions would have been pretty slender.

So as far as I am concerned, let the snappers take a quick shot of the champion and then let them "enhance" it as the owner would like it to be: "Can you make the udder bigger?"

"Do you want me to lengthen its legs so that I can get a bigger udder on it? Do you want a straight back line?

"How big do you want the gigots?"

There could be a whole new questioning session after every championship as criteria such as the above are sorted out.

The owners can then frame the resulting photograph, if that is what it still is, and hang it over the mantelpiece.

They can kid themselves on the champion was really like that.

(In fact, with drink taken they could say it was even better.)

Meanwhile, their visitors – possibly enjoying the hospitality of a dram – will never question the authenticity of the image and make plans to get even more extreme ones of their own stock.

The good part of this pastime is no-one gets hurt and it will not make one whit of difference to the judge or any buyer who will want to see the beast as it really is.

Bring on the shows.