The Taurus bulls of Olaf Nowacki

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