My book now available as an ebook

Due to the many request for an ebook, I now made a kindle ebook version of my book. The advantage is that it is way cheaper since there are no printing costs. If I had known how many want an ebook, I had made one from the start - I apologize. 

 

 Go here for the kindle ebook. 

Auerrind individuals joined the Fahrendahl Heck/Taurus herd!

Earlier this year, the Heck/Taurus herd at Fahrendahl (https://www.auerochsen-fahrendahl.de/) was joined by three individuals from the Auerrind project: Costanza (the Chianina x Watussi cow), Henry (a son of Claus and Doro) plus a young cross cow. Now new breeding herds have been assembled: 

The video shows one of the new breeding groups with the sire Ernie (not to be confused with Erni, the Steinberg/Wörth cow), who has Taurus influence and is estimated to be 150cm tall at the withers. Ernie's herd not only has Constanza in it, but also the extremely beautiful Taurus cow Eliese from the Lippeaue (a daughter of Laniel and a daughter of Londo and Lerida). 

 Another breeding herd this year is that of Elias - a son of Eliese and Egon (a Steinberg/Wörth-influenced Heck bull) with a top ancestry and great potential (and quite an aesthetic look, I think). 

The third breeding herd is with the bull Kasimir, a son of Dominator and Bionade! He is joined by Ella, a daughter of Egon and Eliese. What I love about this young cow is that the Chianina influence is recognizable yet it still has the dense and shaggy Heck cattle winter coat (you can see it here f.e.). They share the herd with some beautiful classical Heck cattle cows. 

 

I am amazed by these great animals and the potential of these combinations is tremendous. The Fahrendahl herds are definitely among the most promising breeding-back herds today.  

 

The African aurochs was even more different than usually assumed

I did a couple of posts on the fur colour of the African aurochs in the past, and all of them are more or less outdated. Yes, aurochs in Africa seem to have had a light colour saddle, but their colour was much more deviant than usually assumed.

 

It all depends on the nature of the bovines depicted in Egyptian tomb paintings. Van Vuure (2005) assumes those are all feral domestic cattle because of the horn shape depicted, but there are some that clearly show aurochs. One of them is the so-called “ostracon with fighting bulls”, which can be found on the internet. This inspired me to my painting of an aurochs bull with exactly that colour fighting off a lion in the Nile delta, which can be seen on my Instagram page.

 

But there are a number of depictions that suggest that there were even more deviant colour variants found in the North African aurochs populations. Looking at all of them, I did this reconstruction based on a skull at the Oran caves:

 

A list of tomb paintings suggesting this colour as much as what the genetic background of it might be can be found in my recently published book.