Highland cattle - good or bad for breeding-back the aurochs?

UPDATE: I changed my mind on the use of Highland in the Tauros Project, or at least the number of Highland crosses they use. Highland might make it difficult to achieve a good size and a slender, athletic body and long snouts, so that the advantage of using primitive breeds only would be gone. 

At first glance, Scottish Highland cattle has everything not desirable in breeding-back the aurochs: small and very bulky body, short legs, short and calf-like skulls, thin horns of various shapes, large udders, no wildtype colour and an unnaturally long coat that causes the cattle to have problems with the heat and felting during summer. But still, Highland cattle is one of the four important founding breeds of Heck cattle and is used in the first generations of the Tauros Programme. Why using this breed in breeding-back at all?

First of all, Highland cattle is a very cold-resistant breed that is used to masses of rain and snow. The dense, overlong hair in pure Highlands is problematic, but is certainly useful in compensating the coat of some Iberian breeds which might not be as long or dense as it is desired for herds in central or northern Europe. This is certainly advantageous.

Concerning their phenotype, many aspects are undesired of course. But in fact there is a number of Highlands that do show aurochs-like horns that face forwards-inwards and are quite thick:

 

© Martin Werker on flickR

Also, Highland cattle is known for its long curly hair between their horns, giving them their cute appearance. This is in fact another useful feature, because it helps to add the curly hair on the head that is applied to the aurochs in historic sources. This feature is present in Hungarian Steppe cattle, Heck cattle, Lidia, Maronesa and some Sayaguesa, but other breeds might need a bit of a “push” for that feature by Highland cattle.

More curly front head hair, please!

So Highland mainly has 3 useful features for breeding-back: good resistance to cold and humidity, good horns if the right individuals are chosen, and long and curly hair between the horns. However, considering the amount of negative features in the breed, Highland cattle should only be used very carefully. Highland contributed many of the undesired traits in Heck cattle that we still see today (because of inconsequent selection). The Tauros Programme is aware of the fact that too much Highland can lead to “Heck cattle 2.0”, therefore this breed is used only in the first cross generations.

And how did they work out? Tauros Project has several Maremmana x Highland crossbreeds that all look interesting. Some of them seem to be coloured red, which is surprising because red is supposed to be recessive under wild-type colour. Many of them show the brindle pattern, which is dominant in wild-type coloured animals and therefore easy to select out. The horns of the crosses are quite upright and straight, but really huge in some individuals (especially some of the bulls, of which no pictures are online). The body is either bulky or longlegged, depending on the individual.

The cross cows at Kempen~Broek have been covered by a Sayaguesa bull, and the calves should be about one year old or so. I don’t have high-resoluted up-to-date photos of these F2 crosses, but judging from what I have seen so far, about the half of them has a good wild colour (which is accordant to the 2. Mendelian rule), although the dimorphism is much reduced (Sayaguesa influence). Let’s see what their offspring will look like. 

(Maremmana x Highland) x Sayaguesa young bull; zoom from  http://weertnatuur.blogspot.co.at