With this
post, I want to give a portrait for two interesting Taurus bulls which both
were born in the Lippeaue and purchased by Olaf Nowacki. Olaf Nowacki was a
Taurus cattle breeder from Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany who had a
passion for the aurochs. At first, he started with Heck cattle, but decided
that he wanted to have larger animals, so he purchased two young Taurus bulls
from the ABU in 2008, one named Lupio and the other one later to be called
Arnulf. My attention to these bulls was drawn when I discovered a photo of
Arnulf on a Facebook page claiming it was a Heck x Chianina bull reaching 170cm
at the shoulders. I had an email correspondence with Mr. Nowacki’s daughter
Judith Fiedler, who kindly provided me with lots of information and photos and
then I decided to do portraits about those interesting bulls. Many thanks!
At first I
was sceptical of a size of 170cm for both bulls, but I was told that Mr.
Nowacki measured both bulls with a yard stick and since we found out that the
Hellinghauser Mersch breeding bull 42 623 reaches 170cm at least, I happily
consider it absolutely plausible. Taurus cattle are simply large cattle. Lupio
was accidentally poisoned by the neighbour in 2013 unfortunately, and Arnulf
was sold last year. Now I am going to give a portrait for the bulls
respectively.
All photos,
unless stated otherwise, were kindly provided by Judith Fiedler, so please do
not use without permission.
Arnulf
As I said,
I discovered that bull on Facebook. The
source was claiming that Arnulf was a Heck x Chianina, and I did not believe
that for two main reasons: it was obviously a bull from the Lippeaue, and no
animals of that combination were born there since the 2000s, and it did not
look like that at all. It looked much more like a Sayaguesa cross. So I asked
Mrs. Fiedler for the ear tag number of the bull so that I could trace down its
descent in the Lippeaue stock lists. It turned out that Arnulf is a son of
Lombriz (50% Sayaguesa, 50% Heck x Chianina) and Lale (half Heck x Sayaguesa
half Heck x Chianina), and therefore a third-generation wild mix of the three
main breeds making up Taurus cattle.
As you see
on the photos, he had a correct aurochs bull colour without dilutions or
saddle. His horn curvature is acceptable average as well. However, his legs are
short by aurochs standards (or the trunk long, depending on the way you look at
it). I was told that he was very gentle in behaviour.
The photo
below shows a son of Arnulf at the age of three years. I think especially the
Chianina descent is obvious in its body shape, head and horns (compare f.e.
here).
Lupio
This bull
must have been a very impressive sight. He was a son of Lucio (Heck x
Sayaguesa) and the Chianina cow Eloisa, and had a well-developed hump, a
correct black colour and horns of a good curvature that were not all that tiny
– all in all he resembled his father quite well, a surprising fact considering
his half-Chianina descent.
Lupio as a very young bull, photo by Matthias Scharf from the ABU |
Good to see you posting again!
ReplyDeleteI'm not surprised Arnulf looks good. His father Lombriz was a very handsome bull as well. Do you know if any of the two bulls have had any calves?
Petter Bøckman
Norway
Yes, of course, the bulls covered the rest of the herd ("ordinary" Hecks), and most of the cows they have now are influenced by them. The post actually shows one of his male descendants at the age of three.
DeleteI love these Aurochs
ReplyDelete