Friday, 3 April 2015

The Tauros cattle at Siendonk & Vosseven

Geer vanne Smeed from weertnatuur.blogspot.com has allowed me to post some of his recent photos of Tauros cattle at Siendonk and Vosseven, Netherlands. I am going to share them with you and try to figure out the identity of the animals shown. All the photos shown here are copyright of G. v. Smeed and used with permission.

 Luueke/Vosseven: 



 This photo is from Janurary and either shows a Sayaguesa (UPDATE: There are no pure Sayaguesa in that herd.) or a Sayaguesa x Tudanca cow. That herd was covered by a Limia bull, what means that the young cow at the left of the photo below is a (Sayaguesa x Tudanca) x Limia cow: 
And has it seems, the Limia bull has now been removed and replaced by the young Maronesa bull from Keent: 
That bull looks a lot better than the one from Loozerheide. The proportions of this bull are going to change for several years, but it appears that it relationship between leg length and trunk length will be alright. If that bull is able to mate this year already (which I assume), we will see the birth of (Sayaguesa x Tudanca) x Maronesa and perhaps also ((Sayaguesa x Tudanca) x Limia) Maronesa next year already. 

Siendonk: 
The herd has been covered by a Maremmana and Pajuna bull since 2013 and consited/consists of Sayaguesa, Maremmana, one Tudanca and several Limia cows. Since the ancestry (not even maternal) is not being documented, we can only guess on the identity of the crossbred animals, which is frustrating. Some of the offspring might also be purebred, what makes it even more ambiguous. 
The young cow at the uppermost photo could be anything: Pajuna x Sayaguesa, Pajuna x Limia, Pajuna x Maremmana, Maremmana x Sayaguesa are likely candidates in my opinion. The cow at the left should be a pure Sayaguesa. The second from above shows a Sayaguesa as well. The next two photos show pure Limia cows, one adult cow which's identity I cannot tell (front), a young Maremmana bull that might be the son of the former one, another subadult bull that I go into later, and another young bull that is between the cow at the front and the Maremmana. There is a grey calf as well (surely a Maremmana descendant, perhaps pure or half Tudanca), which is also seen at the lower most photo together with one of those two mysterious bulls. The way I see it, those two subadult bulls might either be pure Sayaguesa, or any combination between Sayaguesa, Limia and Pajuna.

As you see, these are all just guesses and I might also be wrong on a couple of things, because the information the managers give (and have!) is simply too sparse. 

Thanks to Gerard for taking all these good and informative photos and allowing me to share them here!

 

7 comments:

  1. Thanks Daniel for this post. With pleasure I gave you permission to use my photos. As I told you earlier, I m a just a layman and your assumptions are very interesting. I am doing my advantage in my blog and I am very curious what reactions will follow. Unfortunate anyway, that Free nature and Ark don't react at this kind of posts. I heard from a manager of Ark that he knows your blog, but developments in Kempen~Broek are a closed book.
    Gerard

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  2. Dear Daniël,

    there are no pure Sayaguesa cows, only Sayaguesa x Tudanca. Offspring of those cows (threeway cross with Limia) is still too young to have produced offspring. We are talking about slow maturing animals.

    Best wishes,

    Henri

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    Replies
    1. Are there pictures of the most recent offspring yet?

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  3. Dear Daniël,

    there are no pure Sayaguesa cows, only Sayaguesa x Tudanca. Offspring of those cows (threeway cross with Limia) is still too young to have produced offspring. We are talking about slow maturing animals.

    Best wishes,

    Henri

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    Replies
    1. Ok thanks! Interesting that some of these Sayaguesa x Tudanca resemble pure Sayaguesa that closely.

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  4. Are there any ((Sayaguesa x Tudanca) x Limia) x Maronesa by now?

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    Replies
    1. I guess nobody knows, the TaurOs project does not have a herd book and they have several bulls per herd.

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