The weekend before last weekend, I visited the Lippeaue again, which would be my fifth trip to the Lippeaue since 2013, and then I traveled to the Wistinghauser Senne, Oerlinghausen, where a herd of the Auerrindprojekt is grazing. Here you can see my report on my trip to the two projects.
Lippeaue in 2026
If you do not know some of the animals I mention here, or want to know what they looked like, you can check out my reports on my earlier visits to the Lippeaue.
In the Lippeaue, I met with Katharina Küper, Margret Bunzel-Drüke and Matthias Scharf from the ABU and we traveled into the field to watch the herds. The first stop was the herd at Hellinghauser Mersch, where all-time champion Lamarck was born and once grazed, with the current breeding bull Limit:
Breeding bull Limit
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| Cow 42 604 |
The cow 604 still lives in the herd, I was happy to see her because she always was one of my favorites. She is a daughter of Lamarck and the red Sayaguesa cow Julia, and I think she is incredibly beautiful and aurochs-like. Very elegant, good horns and perfect colour.
Cow Rübe (left in the picture), a daughter of Laokoon's brother and 604
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| Cow Schnitzel, a true F2 out of Laokoon's brother and Laola |
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| 975, a daughter of Laokoon's brother and Lepisma |
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| 844 |
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| 764, the short-horned one on the left, a daughter of Limit and a slightly Lidia-influenced cow |
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| 762, a daughter of Limit and 604 |
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| Heck cow Melanie (front) |
In the herd there is the currently only pure Heck cow named Melanie, she showcases the differences between Taurus and classical Heck cattle very well.
We also had a look at the skull collection in the field. Overall the skulls look aurochs-like but not as elongated.
Londo's skull? 
Young nameless bull 
Darth Vader III 
Londo? 
Linnet
The next stop was Klostermersch-Nord, where the first cow to approach us was old Linea, which we measured at 156 cm at the withers in 2022.
Cow 440, daughter of Londo & Linea 
Linea
Then we visited Kleiberg, which is – I would say – currently the most promising of the Lippeaue herds. It is the herd with prime individuals such as Dominator, Kleopatra, Kalidris, Kalandra and others. And of course Bionade – the currently only Sayaguesa x Chianina in the Lippeaue – who is not only very large (I measured here at 155 cm withers height in 2017) and also the tamest individual because she was raised by hand.
Dominator 
Dominator
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| Kornelia, daughter of Dominator and Klara |
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| Klara |
720, a son of Dominator and Klara 
Edgar, son of Dominator & Kleopatra
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| Edgar |
Klara (daughter
of Linnet and Kleopatra) has this very beautiful, almost uniformly brown colour
with lightly coloured inner legs. Cave paintings theoretically support this
colour because there are solid brown cow paintings at Lascaux, but it is always
questionable how much detail the artist intended to draw. Nevertheless, this
colour is very similar to banteng cows (minus the white socks), thus I do not think
it is unlikely at all that some aurochs populations had cows of that colour. 
Limone
Limone is another interesting cow. She has a rather diluted colour, possibly because her father Laokoon’s brother and her maternal grandfather Luca both had the Chianina dilutions, but she is one quarter Lidia and also has comparably large horns. So taking all into account she is valuable for the breeding process – good horns plus Lidia heritage. Margret told me that she keeps an eye on preserving the remaining Lidia portions in the population.
Now the star of the Kleiberg herd – Dominator. I love this bull for his horns, they are simply the best horns that were achieved so far in terms of curvature. His bodily morphology is what polarizes since he has a rather massive body with legs about 10 cm too short – or the trunk too long, depending on what you choose as the benchmark. Nevertheless, I think he is a very valuable breeding bull, definitely the best one currently in the population and perhaps rivaling the all-time-star Lamarck. And he is much larger than he appears at first glance – I was able to measure him indirectly, because a twig of a tree touched him exactly at the highest point of the withers and I measured the distance between the twig and the ground. He is 176 cm tall at the withers. This is huge, as tall as Laokoon’s brother was, but Limit is even taller. When Limit was in the corral, he touched the bar with his withers, and the bar measures 180 cm to the ground. So yes, the Lippeaue animals are huge, definitely the largest cattle in central Europe (apart from maybe pure Chianina), definitely the largest “breeding-back” cattle ever achieved, and a very spectacular sight in any case.
Then we visited Klostermersch-Süd. The first and tamest cow to appear was Litanei, which has a tiny bit of Lidia in her ancestry (daughter of Laokoon and Laniana). She reached with her head into the car window and I can tell you, that was a huge head. Guessing by eye I would say somewhere between 60 and 70 cm long. Litanei is a real beauty, very Sayaguesa-like in appearance.
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| Litanei |
Because the rest of the herd hid in the bushes, we went on to Disselmersch. Disselmersch is the herd of Leopard II, a somewhat deviant bull. He clearly has some Chianina traits, such as the longish trunk and the small horns and has a prominent colour saddle. However, he has supreme parents, Lamarck and Kaiserschnitte. That’s how genetics work in heterozygous animals – you can get a mediocre animal out of two great parents and vice versa. Margret asked me what I think of Leopard II, and I answered I would replace him with the first bull that is a little bit better.
Then we went to Klostermersch-Süd again and luckily saw the rest of the herd. It has two pure Sayaguesa together with the breeding bull Liquido. He is the son of the large Laniel and 55 397, a cow out of Lerida and Londo, so he has quite good ancestry. KMS is a very interesting herd not only because of the remaining pure Sayaguesa, but also because of Lauretta, a daughter of the Chianina cow Laura and Dominata, a full-blood sister of Dominator that has exactly the same great horn curvature. It is of course tempting to fantasize on mating Dominator and Dominata to each other to stabilize the horn shape, but sibling matings in a population that descends from not a very large number of founders is risky in terms of potential inbreeding problems.
Lauretta
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| 996, daughter of Laniel, mostly Sayaguesa |
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| Liquido |
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| 727, son of Laniel and 996 |
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| Liquido |
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| Dominata |
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| Dominata |
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| pure Sayaguesa |
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| pure Sayaguesa |
We also talked about broadening the genetic diversity of the population. Margret considers further backcrossing with Chianina, which is certainly a great option to further increase the body size and leg length. Pajuna is also an option to her, which is why I suggested the Italian Modicana, which is basically a Pajuna-lookalike but larger. Out of the Southern European cattle pool there are of course many landraces to choose from.
The Auerrind herd at Wistinghauser Senne
At the Wistinghauser Senne, I met with Felix Hohmeyer, Michael Schulte and Yannick Weinand.
Our first stop was, of course, the Auerrind herd. The herd has a beautiful breeding bull named Fred, which is a Sayaguesa x (Maremmana x Watussi). He is not large but otherwise very good and is going to join the Lippeaue population as a new breeding bull for Disselmersch later this year. This is amazing, he will add genes for horn volume the Lippeaue animals and I am looking forward to the first Lippeaue x Auerrind calves.
Frida 
Fred 
Fred 
Pure Sayaguesa 
Tauros cow 
Sayaguesa x Chianina cow 
Fred 
Fred 
Frida 
Fred
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| Maremmana + Sayaguesa x Chianina |
In the herd, there were two Maremmana x Sayaguesa cows and one Tauros cow from the Netherlands of unknown descent – I think the Tauros cow might be the same combination, because that combination is rather common in the Tauros gene pool and she does look exactly like the Sayaguesa x Maremmana cows.
My favourite cow there is Frida, a Pajuna x (Maremmana x Watussi), a daughter of the cross bull Apollo. The pure Pajuna cow unfortunately is no more, because of an injury.
There were also two other Watussi cross cows plus a Chianina x Sayaguesa, two Maremmana cows and a pure Sayaguesa cow in the herd. Lots of potential, I would say.
Cachena x Highland 
Highland 
Highland 
Cachena 
Texas Longhorn 
Texas Longhorn 
Texas Longhorn
Then we also had a look at the other cattle in the Senne that are not part of the Auerrind project but also very interesting, such as a herd of Texas longhorn cows. Two of them had a wildtype colouration. My first thought was that they could be an addition for the Auerrind project, but Felix correctly pointed out that they would certainly inherit all the variations of spotted coat colours present in the longhorn breed. There was also a little Cachena bull, Highland cows and Cachena x Highland cows, one of which almost looked exactly like a classical Heck cow.
Apollo
Alvarez (right) & Darwin (left) 
Watussi cow skull - note the elongated, namadicus-like morphology 
Fred's brother
Then we went to Felix’ place and had a look at skulls of former Auerrind individuals, such as a brother of Fred and also Apollo and Alvarez, the Sayaguesa x Watussi bull.
Conclusion
It was a very enjoyable trip and my big thanks to all the people involved! It is always great fun to discuss in front of the cattle. Regarding the Lippeaue population, I think they look even better than during my last visit in 2022, they are more homogeneous and inwards-facing horns are now the rule. I have the impression that the breeding success really increased in speed during the last 10 years in the Lippeaue, which makes sense from the genetic point of view. In the beginning, it is comparably easy to make step forward by crossing-in Sayaguesa and having a lot of F1 Sayaguesa individuals that will look good because they are half Sayaguesa. Then, in the subsequent generations, when crosses are bred to crosses, genetic chaos breaks loose and all kind of combinations appear. This is where it gets trickier, but once the desired trait combinations become fixed the breeding process gets easier again and the animals become ever more aurochs-like.
Regarding the Auerrindprojekt, it was great to see the animals in real and I think there is tremendous potential in the project. Due to careful selection of very good founding individuals, they acquired quality individuals very fast and since Taurus/Heck and Auerrind are now connected gene pools, at least in one direction, the genetic diversity of the “breeding-back” pool as a whole gets more diverse while remaining high-quality in terms of aurochs-likeness.
As I wrote in my book, the 2020s are truly the golden age of “breeding-back” aurochs-like cattle.
The weekend after my trip to NRW, I went to Hortobagy, Hungary. The report will be published next week, so stay tuned!
