Tuesday 8 April 2014

Sayaguesa and Tudanca in the Veluwe

The Veluwe is the largest continuous forest area in the Netherlands, located in the province of Gelderland near the Veluwemeer. In the reserve Planken Wambuis, a herd of Sayaguesa and some miles away also a herd of Tudanca are kept freely all the year round. At first, only New Forest Ponies were kept in the reserve, but the feeding activities of the horses did not stop the increase of birches, so cattle were added in 2005. At first there were Highland cattle, which were only a temporary solution, the Iberian breeds were added later on. The Sayaguesas arrived in 2006, the Tudancas in 2008. I don't know if they keep the Tudanca and Sayaguesa separated, but there are some adult Tudanca x Highland crosses, even a bull among them.
Down below you have some beautiful photos of the cattle living in the reserve. The lowermost Tudanca bull is very surprising because of his black colour without a grey saddle.

Sayaguesa:


Tudanca:



Tudanca x Highland:

And here is a video: 




5 comments:

  1. Do you know if any work has been done on the difference in ecological niche of aurochs and wisent? Unfortunately both species were ecological extinct too soon for any information to have passed on by observation and it will become an interesting issue when the different breeding back projects will get in a further stage and wisents become more numerous and both species will be impacting on areas together in larger numbers.

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    1. Since the ecologic niche of aurochs and domestic cattle are most likely 100% congruent, therefore we do know something about its ecological differences from the wisent. The Wisent is a semi-intermediary feeder what means that they consume more twigs, leaves and bark than cattle do, which are classified as grazers.

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  2. Tudanca breed bulls are beautiful. Some males are
    almost identical to aurochs, but females are not as
    good. The horns of the females are very rare, open
    and twisted outward. I think it would be very
    interesting mix tudanca breed bulls with sayaguesa cows. What do you think?

    Look at these pictures of tudanca bulls.

    http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SNlouhsHqfI/UAmRUBrqbQI/AAAAAAAAE2Q/wcRS_3_e-PE/s758/toro.jpg

    http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m16TU13QdkY/TsBFCFMU3YI/AAAAAAAAEB0/nYV32shh_Aw/s280/feriadearenas.png

    http://www.valledebedoya.com/Bedoya/vacas/images/vac95.jpg

    http://www.valledebedoya.com/Bedoya/vaca/images/va11.jpg

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/Toro-raza-tudanca.JPG/640px-Toro-raza-tudanca.JPG

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    Replies
    1. Whether if its a mix between a bull and a cow or a cow and a bull is irrelevant, and it is also irrelevant what first-generation cross animals look like. But basically, a mix of Tudanca and Sayaguesa has potential in it, although it would clearly lack the horn dimensions, the curvature probably would be only rarely ideal and the bulls would be more longish than it is desired.
      The Tauros Project has some Tudanca x Sayaguesa cows, I linked the video at least once in one of my posts on the Tauros Project if I remember correctly.

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  3. http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/5009/Archief/archief/article/detail/3436982/2013/05/06/Spaanse-grazer-verdrijft-de-Schotse.dhtml

    New living space for sayaguesa in drenthe. Interestingly they mention large differences in grazing patterns between highland and sayaguesa. Sayaguesa moving around and more choosy, where highland grazes one area to the ground before moving on.

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