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:
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| Limit (UPDATE: The upper one right is Lupo, not 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.
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| 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 right, 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.
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| Londo's skull? |
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| Young nameless bull |
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| Darth Vader III |
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| Londo? |
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| 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.
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| Cow 440, daughter of Londo & Lerida |
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| 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.
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| Dominator |
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| Dominator |
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| Kornelia, daughter of Dominator and Klara |
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| Klara |
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| 720, a son of Dominator and Klara |
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| 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.
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| 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 eighth 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.
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| 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.
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| Frida |
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| Fred |
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| Fred |
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| Pure Sayaguesa |
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| Tauros cow |
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| Sayaguesa x Chianina cow |
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| Fred |
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| Fred |
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| Frida |
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| 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.
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| Cachena x Highland |
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| Highland |
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| Highland |
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| Cachena |
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| Texas Longhorn |
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| Texas Longhorn |
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| 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.
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| Apollo |
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| Alvarez (right) & Darwin (left) |
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| Watussi cow skull - note the elongated, namadicus-like morphology |
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| 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!
Thank you for the update! I always very much look forward to hearing about developments in the Lippeaue and elewhere.
ReplyDeleteI like cow 975. Not only does she have great colour, but also very massive horns in comparison to most other cows.
Regarding Dominator, we already had that combination of inward curving horns and too short legs in Londo, I think (or was it Linnet?) He didn’t have Dominator's size though.
Dominator and Dominata really make me optimistic for the development of horn curvature in the next cross generations.
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[Part 2]
ReplyDeleteFrida of the Auerrind herd, a Pajuna x (Maremmana x Watussi), has small horns for her ancestry; she doesn’t seem to have inherited much if anything from her Watussi grandparent. You say she is your favourite cow there, but you don’t explain why. I like her for her Pajuna genes (good for genetic diversity) and she seems to have impressive withers for a cow and seems to be relatively square in build. Does that line up with your impressions?
Fred, a Sayaguesa x (Maremmana x Watussi), is like Frida only a first-generation a x b cross, which means he won’t breed true. Phenotypically he has Maremmana x Watussi-sized horns and Sayaguesa-like forward-pointing horns (the exact opposite of Frida), so the genes for that must be in his gene mix which makes me hopeful for him passing those traits on. His 50% Maremmana x Watussi ancestry will add to the genetic diversity of the Lippeaue: that’s very good, in my opinion.
Unfortunately, we don’t have much information on the cows of the Disselmersch herd to which Fred will be bred; that would have been interesting to know.
That wildtype-coloured Texas Longhorns might carry all the variations of spotted coat colours present in the Longhorn breed is not correct. Luckily for almost all colour genes the wild type is recessive while the deviant alleles are dominant (or, in the case of dun, intermediate.) The only exceptions are the basic spotting (s, the “Holstein”-patterned spotting) and on the extension locus the red colouration (d), so these two are the only ones that might be hidden in a wildtype-coloured Texas Longhorn (see David Hillis, Coat Color of Texas Longhorns, http://doublehelixranch.com/color.html .)
Auerrind and Tauros cattle should be free of those alleles, so adding Longhorns might be a viewed as a bit of a problem by them. Taurus cattle, though, already have e and s alleles in their gene pool through Heck cattle, so nothing new there. They very rarely crop up, and if they do, they can immediately be culled. (You once did a post on deviantly-coloured specimens even showing up in wild animals like roe deer and wild boar, if I remember correctly.)
The two Longhorn cows in Wistinghauser Senne might not truly be wildtype-coloured, though. Wildtype-coloured Texas Longhorns cows normally show a combination of black and red, like Lippeaue cows 604 and 975, so these two Longhorn cows may have some sort of dilution in them (like possibly also Frida and Lippeaue-Klara). This at least shouldn’t be a problem for Auerrind, Taurus or Tauros, though, as all these programmes are swamped with dilution alleles already; no new variants of undesirable alleles would be added.
Longhorn cattle are hardy, lean, have non-protruding wildtype udders and graze Senecio (almost no European breed does; and that’s a problem plant for grazing); but they are not large and very few Longhorns in Europe have horns that are larger than those of Maremmana or Hungarian Grey. What I very much like about them is that they should add a lot to genetic diversity. They split off from European cattle long before all that forced genetic loss happened, and they lived feral or semi-feral for centuries in an ecosystem much warmer and drier than European ecosystems, so they should have ended up with a lot of alleles very different from those in Europe. (The Senecio tolerance could presumably be a result of that.)
But unfortunately, genetic diversity takes a decided backseat to phenotype in backbreeding, as far as I can tell. Extreme example: the breed group with by far the highest genetic diversity in Europe are the Busha cattle of the Balkans. But the chance that anyone will ever use those in backbreeding seems zero, even in the ongoing backbreeding programmes in the Bushas’ homelands.
I did not cover the Disselmersch cows extensively because the herd will partly be re-assembled when Fred is going to join the herd. As for Frida, I like her for her Pajuna genes and the colour is aesthetically appealing. It's a similar uniformly brown shade as in Klara or the Longhorn cows, which I interpret as a less melanized expression of the wildtype colour. As for Busha, you are correct in terms of genetic diversity, but due to their small size they would be difficult to breed in.
DeleteReassembling the herd for a different bull makes sense, I guess. If you receive information about the composition of the Disselmersh herd once it has been reassembled and have photos of the cows, it would be great if you posted about it.
DeleteCattle colouration is a fascinating topic. The main colour deviations are relatively well known (see e.g. the Hillis article series), but all the minor genetic influences seem to be uncharted territory. If the colouration of Klara et al is, as I proposed in my comment, the result of dilution with reduced melanization in both cows and bulls, it should be bred against regardless of aesthetic preferences, and it automatically would, as it would also show up in the bulls, and those bulls would be culled. If on the other hand, it is, as you assume, the result of a reduced melanization only in cows, it would lead to an enhanced colour dimorphism and should be highly welcome. (I wonder whether we would then end up with a continuum of colouration ranging from 604-type-colouration to Klara-type-colouration with many intermediate stages, or whether the two colouration types would be discrete, with always only either one or the other being expressed phenotypically.)
“As for Busha, you are correct in terms of genetic diversity, but due to their small size they would be difficult to breed in” – and that preference for very quickly attaining a perfect phenotype over acquiring and then retaining high genetic diversity during the breeding process is why we are presumably facing an irreversible loss in European Bos tauros genetics over the next decades. Landraces keep shrinking in numbers (and consequentially in genetic diversity, as keeping a few individuals for nostalgic reasons won’t keep their large and varied gene pool alive), while we retain only highly derived dairy, beef and “wild-type” grazing breeds, all with very narrow gene pools.
It is only in the large grazing herds, whether managed or rewilded, that we might stand a chance to preserve at least a part of Europe’s large, ancestral cattle gene pool.
Regarding Texas Longhorns, I wonder whether the Auerrind people have watched for or observed grazing differences regarding Senecio in their herd and the Longhorn herd? Those plants are poisonous and thus inedible for most cattle breeds (and other grazers), but Longhorn are immune to them and eat them just fine. I know that Oostvaardersplassen ended up with immense swathes of Senecio despite its high density of grazers with the resulting strong grazing pressure and the scarcity of edible plants in winter. And I have heard the same about other Dutch and Danish grazed nature preserves. So experimenting with Texas Longhorns might be highly advisable.
For me, Edgar and 720 are the next promising sires. And if I really have to favor one of the two, I find 720 really interesting because he has a less saddle-like body than his sire and half-brother, and horns that spread well and will most likely curve slightly inward in the coming years. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteI like all the young bulls, also 727, they all have good parents and a good phenotype. Let's see which one of them becomes a future sire
DeleteSeeing Dominator makes me smile. Such a powerful and magnificent animal, he could almost be a cross between Aurochs and an old domestic breed. I think it would be interesting to breed him to a chianina for size though of course colour and horns would not be good
ReplyDeleteGran articulo cres que se pueda suprimir el tamaño de la papada y el prepucio colgante por seleccion o por influencia de depredadores?
ReplyDelete