The Breeding-back Blog: November 2016

Friday, 25 November 2016

Some new photos from the Auerrind project

The cattle of the Auerrind project, Germany, have recently been moved to winter pastures because the current size of their summer areas is not yet large enough to support the whole herd during winter. In their recent post, the project released new photos of some of their stock. All of the photos are owned by Auerrind.wordpress.com.

The a little more than two years old Chianina bull Bruno, which is to cover the two new Watussi cows next year. He is taller than grown Watussi cows already and seems to have a firm body. At this young age he is elegantly proportioned like deer, let's see what he is going to look like when he is fully grown.

Maua, one of the new Watussi cows from Zoo Neuwied.

Speranza, one of the Chianina cows. She has reached her sister's shoulder height of 165 cm now and has a great morphology - actually, only the correct colour (we are talking about very few genes here) and horns would be needed and this would be a marvelously aurochs-like animal.

Elena and Edda, two of the Maremmana cows, which placed in a herd among the Sayaguesa cows and Thando.

Thando, the now three-year old Watussi breeding bull at Lorsch. His coat colour seems to be darker than that of the cows (Watussi occasionally seem to retain a reduced sexual dichromatism). I am very much looking forward to seeing cross results with Watussi, we can expect Watussi x Sayaguesa and Watussi x Grey in the near future. Thando seems to be quite muscular and has impressive horns.

I think that the animals of the Auerrind project are developing very well, now I am looking forward to seeing their genes mixed up.