A sneak peek into my book

Today I want to give you a little sneak peek into my book so that you can see what you can expect from my book "Breeding-back wild beasts: aurochs, wild horse and quagga". Now available on Amazon. 

Life reconstructions, anatomical drawings of all types of aurochs 

 

Lots and lots of photos of "breeding-back" cattle, including brand new previously unreleased photos of the Hortobagyi animals

Previously unpublished reconstructions of wild horses

Reconstructions showing the variation within the quagga

The cover; I'll reveal the bull on the cover in an upcoming post

New photos of Dominator from this summer

Sorry for my long absence on this blog during the last couple of months. It has been because I am very busy with finishing the last illustrations for my upcoming book on "breeding-back" and I am very happy the results so far. The book is currently in its finishing phase and might get published within a few months. It will be worth the wait - I am very confident that you will love it. It will contain some new studies, never before published photos of "breeding-back" cattle and a lot of (I hope) lifelike illustrations. I'm putting my heartblood in it and the process is great fun. 

For today, I have some new photos of the Taurus cattle bull Dominator for you. As many of you will know, Dominator is the breeding bull at Kleiberg, part of the Lippeaue population. He is the son of Laniel and a Sayaguesa cow. Laniel was half Sayaguesa and half Laokoon's Brother, who himself was half Sayaguesa and half Heck x Chianina. Therefore, Dominator is mostly Sayaguesa with a bit of Heck and Chianina. 

I was sent the photos by Yannick Weinand and they are courtesy of Stephan Krümpelmann, who kindly allowed me to use the photos for the blog. Here they are: 

As you can see, Dominator's horns are superb. They curve inwards and if they continue to grow they might develop a perfect primigenius spiral. The angle between snout and horns is rather narrow, but within the range found in European aurochs (see f.e. the skull fragment from Eich bei Worms, Germany).

I also like the cow on the lower photo very much. She has the beautiful name Kleopatra and is a daughter of Linnet and Kalidris, the latter is a daughter of Laokoon and Bionade. Those are very good ancestors and her appearance is great as well. She has a somewhat Lidia-like look, although she has no Lidia in her ancestry. Both her parents are crossbred themselves, which is good because it is way more difficult to get a good individual from two crossbred parents due to inheritance. 

 

Looking at these animals, I am very optimistic for the future development of the Lippeaue population and "breeding-back" in general. Big thanks to Stephan Krümpelmann for allowing me to post the photos.  You can check out his Instagram channel Auerochsen Fahrendahl to see photos of his amazing cattle.

Auerrind project update

Claus Kropp from the Auerrind project posted an update to the project today, with lots of beautiful photos of their very promising and beautiful cattle. I love seeing how the project is progressing that fast, it shows that the choice of breeds and individuals to breed with is on point.

I own an aurochs horn now: what it tells us

Recently I purchased an aurochs horn from most likely or at least the 15^th century. It is not only the only one in private hands known, but also the largest aurochs horn sheath known and beautifully preserved. It is from a private collection and was inherited by Daniel Vanackere who gave me the opportunity to purchase it. His family owned the horn for centuries in Rotterdam. Very, very big thanks to Daniel Vanackere to give me the opportunity to acquire the horn! 

 

Here it is:

It measures 134 cm at the outer bow, 13,5 cm at the anteroposterior diametre, 11 cm in dorsoventral diametre and 41 cm in circumference at the base. The beauty of this horn is that it is almost completely unmodified, just one or two centimetres at the base seem to have been cut off and there is an attachment for what might have been a belt that was attached onto the horn in the 15^th century. Most putative aurochs horn sheaths that we see are sanded down and polished, and the tip is often cut off (see here for example). My horn is completely the way it was on the living bull, except for a slight discolouration on the surface as it is 500 years old. But one can still recognize where the blackish tip starts and where the yellowish part of the horn was. 

 

I think it is highly likely that it is from a pure, mature male aurochs. I think so because of the curvature (yes, the tip curves outwards but read on), the dorsoventrally compressed horn base (a trait very expressed in Pleistocene aurochs, less so in Holocene aurochs and not in most domestic cattle), the size, the thick base and the very slim tip (a contrast less expressed in domestic cattle) and the keel on the ventral side of the horn (a keel on the horn is a very ancient trait in aurochs, most common in the Indian aurochs and some zebu). 

Concerning the curvature, we should consider that of most aurochs horns only the bony cores are preserved while sheaths that definitely are from pure aurochs are very rare. I wanted to know what the bony core of the horn would have looked like and so I made a “cast” of partly plaster, wire and tissue paper, and this is the result: 

As we can see, the bony core has a perfect aurochs shape and with 70 cm it also fits in dimensions. It is just that the horn tip does not follow the curvature of the bony core, but makes a turn and curves outwards-forwards. I have been puzzling about that. I assumed that maybe there was much more variability in the shape of the horn sheath than the bony cores suggest. My first thought to that assumption was: but the depictions of aurochs all show inwards-curving horns. But then thought further and it came to my mind that there are actually quite a few aurochs depictions with lyre-shaped horns. For example, this one from a chalcography from 1596, showing an aurochs hunt in Bavaria: 

Scan from Walter Frisch's Der Auerochs, original photo by Museum Karlsruhe

Or the famous depiction in Siegismund von Herberstein’s book showing his aurochs taxidermy:

It is usually assumed that the horns in this depiction were simply invented by the artist and that they were lacking in the taxidermy. However, it shows the wavy surface of my horn and the shape is compatible as well. 

 

And then there would be the depiction of the African aurochs in Beierkuhnlein 2015 [1]. 

 

In the past, I did not put much emphasis on the depicted lyre-shape of the horns, assuming that the artists did not pay much attention to the actual horn shape or that they invented the horns, or did not see life aurochs in real et cetera. But looking at my horn, I see that differently now. I have no idea how common such an outwards-curving tip in the aurochs was, it could have been 1%, 10%, 80% of bulls, everything is possible. 

 

How does the horn fit with other preserved aurochs horn sheaths? First of all, it is its incredible size that sticks out. Medieval aurochs horns usually are not nearly as large as those of earlier ages, particularly the Pleistocene. But this one is. Also, late aurochs had a quite round horn base, much more like domestic cattle than earlier aurochs. But mine has a dorsoventrally compressed horn base, as a Pleistocene aurochs would. Also it has the keel on the ventral side which I haven’t seen in any other putative aurochs horn sheath yet. So morphologically, my horn fits much older aurochs better than other aurochs horn sheaths from the medieval times onwards. How can that be interpreted? I see several possibilities: a) the sample size (some dozens of sheaths) is too small to correctly determine the variability of very late aurochs horns, b) my horn is much older than the 15^th century c) the other putative aurochs horn sheaths are from aurochs that were hybrids with domestic cattle and my horn is one of the very few, or perhaps the only one, preserved that is from an aurochs free or almost free of domestic influence. 

I tend to favour explanation c. The sample size is not that small, I have seen at least 20 sheaths so far. And all of them are rather small by aurochs standards, except for my horn. Explanation b would require that the horn somehow survived that well preserved a very long time, which makes it unlikely that it was found in turf, permafrost or soil as it would now be discoloured which it is not. The only scenario I can think of is that the horn has been in human hands since, for example, the Roman times and got passed on by generation to generation. But I don’t know if that scenario is plausible. 

But there is considerable reason to assume that many very late aurochs populations were actually hybrids with domestic cattle. Hybridization in both directions between cattle and aurochs has been found on the Iberian Peninsula [2]. A study examined 7 putative aurochs horn sheaths genetically, and it was found that 3 of them have domestic cattle mitochondria, including the horn of the last bull from Jaktorow from 1620 (which is only 46 cm long and very weakly curved, with the base and the tip being almost equally thick) [3]. That the other ones have the P haplotype does not rule out introgression from cattle as some cattle have that haplotype and it does not tell us anything about the nuclear genome. 

 

I assume the horn belonged to a bull because of the thick horn base and the size of the sheath. It could be that it was an old mature bull, since horns continue to grow until death and the tip is very long (it makes up 48% of the length of the horn). Old bulls are solitary and do not fight for mating rights anymore, so they could effort to have that long and thin horn tips. I estimate the bull was 15 to 20 years old at time of death. I would like to know the story of that bull, and the precise locality where it died.  

This is what the set of horns might have looked like on the living animal: 

This of course makes me wonder how large the bull was. I tried to calculate the withers height of the bull using photos of two very large-horned specimens, the Etival and the Sassenberg bull. I calculated the relative size of the horn diametre at the base to the withers height and multiplicated it with the diametre of my horn. The result was 190 cm. Considering that I used skeletons as a reference that would have been surrounded by soft tissue in the living animal, the bull might have been between 195 and 200 cm tall at the withers in life. 

 

 

I am sure some of you will be familiar with the curvature of the horn. Many Maronesa cows, some Sayaguesa cows and also many Tudanca (in this breed also the bulls) have a horn curvature that is very similar to that one. I used to think that these outwards-forwards curving horn tips are a domestic mutation, but my horn changed my perspective on that. It seems possible that this is part of the variation of the aurochs, and has been preserved in breeds such as Maronesa and Tudanca. 

 

I think this underlines the preciousness of Maronesa. It is the only breed still in existence that I know of that has a colour that 100% matches that of the European aurochs, with a well-marked sexual dichromatism. It is also one of the very few breeds that has strongly inwards-curving horns and it seems that the corkscrew-like curvature seen in many cows is part of the natural variability of the aurochs. A Maronesa-Tudanca lineage could maybe reproduce the curvature of my horn precisely. 

 

Literature 

 

[1] Beierkuhnlein, 2015: Bos primigenius in ancient Egyptian art. 

[2] Günther et al.: The genomic legacy of Human management and sex-biased aurochs hybridization in Iberian cattle. 2023 (preprint). 

[3] Bro-Jorgensen et al., 2018: Ancient DANN analysis of Scandinavian medieval drinking horns and the horn of the last aurochs bull. 

 

 

 

Awesome photos of awesome Tauros cattle

I am always excited when I see new photos of Tauros cattle, because I have not yet had the opportunity to visit any of the herds of the project. Bert van Beek has lots of great photos of very interesting Tauros cattle on his Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/bertvanbeekphotography/

 

Have a look at the photos, I like the cattle very much. One cow seems to be a Maronesa x Maremmana, the cow with the huge lyre-shaped but forwards-facing horns. Another one seems to be Sayaguesa x Maronesa and has a perfect horn curvature. I think an (F2 Maronesa x Sayaguesa) x (F2 Maronesa x Maremmana) would have great potential, especially an F2 from that combination. I think some of the photos show Manolo Uno, the Maremmana x Pajuna bull that was born at the start of the project, but it could also be a bull of the same combination. One bull has a really large hump, a characteristic that quite a few Tauros bulls have. 

 

It would be extremely awesome if all of the current projects would one day cooperate in some sort by exchanging individuals once all of them have reached a similar level of quality as an aurochs substitute. 

Magnificent young Auerrind bulls

Recently, Felix Hohmeyer posted photos of young bulls from the Auerrind herd near Bielefeld on Facebook: 

© Felix Hohmeyer

© Felix Hohmeyer

The upper one is a son of Apollo (Maremmana x Watussi) and a Sayaguesa cow, the bottom one is the (Sayaguesa x Grey) x (Sayaguesa x Watussi). I have to say I am very happy with those bulls, they look great. They were born in 2022, so they are still young, but their morphology, colour and horns look very promising. The cow in the background of the bottom photo seems to be part Chianina, I would say the ideal mating partner for those bulls. I think the Auerrind project is progressing extremely well and I am very much looking forward to seeing those animals fully grown and their future offspring. 

New photos of the Watussi-influenced Auerrind cattle

 Here are some new photos of Watussi-influenced Auerrind cattle: 

© Yannick Weinand

These photos show the Watussi x Chianina cow. It is interesting to see its phenotype develop, as this combination bears a huge potential for future crossbreeds.

 

All the subsequent photos are © Claus Kropp

This is the (Sayaguesa x Hungarian Grey) x (Sayaguesa x Watussi). It looks great, it has a perfect aurochs colour and a very long snout, much of the Sayaguesa-appeal. 

This cow is the Chianina x (Sayaguesa x Watussi). Her morphology is very good, and her light but not diluted colour endorses the suspicion that Chianina has some degree of sexual dichromatism masked by the dilution alleles. Also the snout is very long. 

This is one of the Maremmana x Sayaguesa cows with the Sayaguesa x Chianina bull behind it. This combination bears good potential, Chianina and Sayaguesa bring the size, Maremmana horn length and a good winter coat. 

This young bull is (Watussi x Sayaguesa) x (Watussi x Chianina). It's great that this combination exists, it has the potential for tremendous horns and the colour is right as well. 

This is the (Sayaguesa x Grey) x (Sayaguesa x Watussi) bull, a combination which I think bears great potential. The horns seem to grow huge, especially considering that the bull is not even 3 years old (!). 

I have to say that I am very happy with how the Auerrind project is progressing. Those are great animals with a lot of potential for even better future crosses.

Turning Darth Vader III into an aurochs

I have attempted reconstructing the aurochs by photo manipulation using GIMP on photos of aurochs-like cattle multiple times, but this time I think I might have fabricated the most accurate one I have attempted so far. 

 

I used a photo of Darth Vader III, a Taurus bull that is a son of Londo (F2 Sayaguesa x (Heck x Chianina)) and Laniana (which had a little bit of Lidia in her genealogy), thus is 1/32 Lidia, that I took in the Lippeaue in 2022. I superimposed a photo of the Store-damme aurochs skeleton, which I had previously corrected into an anatomically correct posture on the photo. Then I started to manipulate the proportions and shape of the bull according to the anatomically correctly positioned skeleton. I increased the length of the legs, changed the hump by enlarging it slightly, reduced the length of the dewlap, made the neck slightly longer. For the head, I used a photo of the skull from the Sassenberg bull. I made the snout slightly longer, and the postorbital region of the head. Then I made the bodily morphology more like a wild bovine by reducing the bulk of the waist and belly. All the other aspects of the original bull photo fitted the aurochs skeleton. Honestly, I was surprised that I did not have to change the bull that dramatically. The horns of the original had to be removed with the stamp tool, I replaced it with a horn from the Heck cow Erni of the Steinberg/Wörth lineage that I skewed slightly.

This is the original photo of Darth Vader III: 

 

This is the result: 

 

I am very happy with it. It looks rather plausible and credible for a real (wild) bovine to me, more so than my recent model which is based on the same skeleton and skull: https://breedingback.blogspot.com/2023/04/life-reconstruction-model-of-sassenberg.html 

The photo manipulation shows me the deficiencies of the model, my next one is going to be better. 

 

I think that less-derived Lidia, Spanish fighting cattle, are the cattle that come closest to this reconstruction by far. In my opinion, this phenotype is roughly achievable in “breeding-back”, as long as wild yak, Java banteng and Lidia are in the mix and used wisely. 

Auerrind update

On 7th November, the blog of the Auerrind project posted a little update. It shows some photos of crossbred individuals, f.e. that one: 

© Claus Kropp

It shows the two (Sayaguesa x Chianina) x (Sayaguesa x Watussi) bulls, still at young age. I can't wait to see them fully grown because that combination is the in my opinion most promising one of the project so far. If they grow tall and with large horns, they will make prime new breeding bulls. I think the best mating partner for those bulls is the (Sayaguesa x Watussi) x Chianina cow, because she is of a light colour and has a full set of Chianina chromosomes, which at least has the potential to result in a large offspring with large horns and some sexual dichromatism. I am looking forward to see the future development of these individuals. 

Heck cattle at Oostvaardersplassen develop aurochs-like horns

I have made a couple of posts about the possible changes in horn shape in the Heck cattle in the Oostvaardersplassen reserve. Recently, I found some new photos of a group of young bulls in the reserve that all show interesting horns from March this year. You can see the animals here. 

Not only are the horns interesting, the bulls are also much more long-legged and less massive than Heck cattle found in zoos (which is were they descended from). Morphology can be influenced by phenotypic plasticity, so these changes in body shape and proportions do not necessarily indicate a genetic change in these cattle. In the case of the horns, however, I see no way how phenotypic plasticity can influence the horn curvature and orientation relative to the snout, thus I think we see genetic changes here. A change in allele frequency as a result of natural selection is the population genetic definition of evolution. Thus, we might see evolution at work here. 

In how far are the horns of these young bulls different? For once, they face clearly forwards in a 70 to 60° angle relative to the snout, which is identical with the horn orientation of the European aurochs. Earlier Heck cattle from the reserve (which can be seen on older photos easily available on the internet) never have forwards-facing horns, at least not on the photos I have seen so far, which are quite a lot. Furthermore, while the horns of early Oostvaardersplassen Heck cattle are curved rather straight, the horns in these bulls are curved more clearly. They do not curve inwards as strongly in the aurochs by far, but a tendency of the horn tips to grow a curve is there. This can also be seen, even more clearly, in some of the cows in the reserve (the photos aren't online anymore, unfortunately). To me, this suggests that the horn shape of the Heck cattle in the Oostvaardersplassen reserve is evolving. Precisely, evolving to a more aurochs-like horn shape. 

This is not surprising, as the horn shape of the aurochs probably had a purpose. Their strong inwards-curve enabled the bovine to push and pull the opponent during a fight, and the fact that they faced forwards and not upwards or downwards was likely functionally advantageous as well. If the horn shape of the Heck cattle in the reserve is indeed evolving, which can only be proven by gathering photos of individuals from the early years till today, it would endorse the following thoughts: 

1. the horn shape in cattle/aurochs has a function and the horn shape of the aurochs was not a coincidence

2. This has an impact on the evolutive fitness of the individuals (the more functionally advantageous the horn shape the higher the likelihood to win an intraspecific combat for breeding rights, feeding grounds etc.)

3. Eventually, the wildtype horn shape will develop in a cattle population that is exposed to natural selection, especially intraspecific selection 

The more genetically diverse the population, the faster the changes evolve (Fisher's fundamental theorem). Since Heck cattle is a mosaic breed based on many different cattle breeds, the wide range of phenotypes displayed by the individuals might have enabled the adaption process to become visible quite fast. 

I postulated that natural selection will make a variable cattle population in the wild more aurochs-like because wildtype traits are functionally advantageous multiple times on my blog, and I think these recent photos of Heck bulls at the Oostvaardersplassen reserve endorse this idea when you compare them with earlier individuals of the same population. In my opinion, the Heck cattle at this reserve are a valuable example for dedomestication. 

It is no secret that the original founding population of the Heck cattle at the Oostvaardersplassen, being ordinary Heck cattle from various locations, were not prime examples for aurochs-likeness. Yet, natural selection produced at least partly aurochs-like horn phenotypes after 40 years of intraspecific competition. This fits my idea that natural selection will "refine" any "breeding-back" product once released into the wild - if it worked on the mediocrely aurochs-like founding population of Oostvaardersplassen, imagine what kind of phenotypes might be produced by 40 years of natural selection with more aurochs-like cattle. 

My trip to the Lippeaue in 2022 (Taurus cattle)

Last week I visited the Lippeaue reserve again, which is the main Taurus cattle breeding site in Germany. As usual, it was a very enjoyable trip, and it was great to see the animals again and how the herds progressed since 2017. 

It has been five years since my last trip to the reserve in 2017. Some of the older individuals have died or had to be slaughtered in the meantime, including Lerida, Dona-Urraca (the Sayaguesa cow with the great horn curvature), Linnet and the huge Laokoon’s brother. Others, like Lamarck, are still in the herd. The other current breeding bulls are new. I counted 98 individuals in the stock list, including the calves. As long-term readers of my blog will know, the Lippeaue population is divided into five herds: Hellinghauser Mersch, Klostermersch-Nord, Klostermersch-Süd, Disselmersch and Kleiberg. There is one breeding bull per herd, selection takes place by picking a breeding bull with desired traits and selecting out individuals. 

 

Hellinghauser Mersch 

 

The current breeding bull at Hellinghauser Mersch is a nameless bull with the number 47 938, which is the son of Laniel and Larissa. Therefore, both its parents are crossbred themselves – this is good, because it’s where the real selective breeding starts. 47 938, as a result of two crossbred individuals that both are very useful, looks good itself. He has a flawless wildtype colour, horns facing forwards in a 60° angle to the snout, the hump is more or less large, and he has a short dewlap. He is three years old, thus not fully grown. 

 

The cow 42 604 is one of my favourite cows. I saw her as a young cow in 2013, and her horns developed considerably since then. Her colour is a flawless aurochs cow colour, and bears striking resemblance to some of the depictions at the Lascaux cave. She is a daughter of Lamarck (Sayaguesa x (Heck x Chianina)), and Julia, a red Sayaguesa cow, thus she is 75% Sayaguesa. In general, Sayaguesa is by far the dominating breed in the Lippeaue gene pool. This is because Sayaguesa simply is a very useful breed that results in good-looking animals. 

 

Another good cow of the same combination but with a different Sayaguesa mother (named Zamora) is 42 630. Like 42 604, she has a perfect wildtype colour and her horns are good as well. 

 

Apart from the wildtype-coloured individuals, there are some other colours as well. There is the cow 55 443, which is one of those with a pink nose and a light coat colour. I think that it is possible that it is the e mutation on the Extension locus, a colour variant that is found in breeds like Highland and Simmental, but I am not sure. This mutation disables the production of black pigment in the mucosa, horn tips and coat colour and is recessive under the wildtype allele. I wonder which breed contributed the colour variant displayed by 55 443, perhaps Heck cattle (Highland is one of the founding breeds of Heck). Basically, it is tried to avoid this colour variant, but 55 443 has good horns and is comparably large, so she is kept in the herd. She is the daughter of Laokoon’s brother (Sayaguesa x (Heck x Chianina)) and Loren, a daughter of Luca and Lirgit. 

 

Another cow with a deviant colour variant is 47 988. Her nose is pink too, therefore she might have the e mutation too, but she also seems to have dilution alleles contributed by Chianina. She will be selected out. 

 

One of the Lidia-influenced individuals is 79 813. She is the daughter of Lamarck and Lepisma, a half-Lidia cow. She is a little bit more nervous than other cows, which is very likely due to the Lidia influence. Her horns are good, the colour is alright as well, and she is from good parents. 

 

Most of the bulls that are born in the Lippeaue are black with a dorsal stripe. Some, however, have a saddle. And a young bull in the Hellinghauser Mersch this year is kind of cow-coloured. He is a son of Laokoon’s brother. I suspect that this is the case because Laokoon’s brother had a saddle, so that the sexual dichromatism is less pronounced in some of the individuals in this herd. 

 

55 444 is another cow with a flawless aurochs cow colour. 

 

Klostermersch-Nord

 

Lamarck is an old boy now, he is 15 years old. He still looks good, he did not grow a massive body. I think his horns even grew a little bit. I still consider Lamarck the best Taurus bull to date, and therefore the best “breeding-back” bull that was born yet, although he is not as huge as Laokoon’s brother. Due to his age, he has become slow and tired, often he is found outside the herd. It’s probably his last year. 

 

Linea is of the same combination as Larissa, namely Chianina x (Sayaguesa x (Heck x Chianina)). She is the daughter of the Chianina cow Eloisa and Lombritz. As she came rather close, we tried to measure her withers height, and the result was 156 cm. For a cow that’s a very good size, most aurochs cows were not much larger. 

 

01 896 is a daughter of Laokoon’s brother and Dunja, so it is an F2 of the combination Sayaguesa x (Heck x Chianina). I think true F2 are very interesting, as they have a higher chance to be homozygous than usual crossbreeds.  

 

55 441 is the daughter of Lamarck and Nadia, the Heck cow from the Steinberg/Wörth lineage, so she is half Heck half Sayaguesa x (Heck x Chianina). 

 

Nadia herself is old now and doesn’t calf anymore. She bore two bull calves which were slaughtered and 55 441. 

 

Klostermersch-Süd

 

Most of the individuals on this photo have the right colour for their sex, so there is good dichromatism in the herd

The breeding bull at Klostermersch-Nord is Laniel. He is the son of the Sayaguesa cow named Augustina and Laokoon’s brother. The horn curvature is really nice and also the hump is comparably large, what compensates the fact that he has a faint saddle. 

 

01 870 is a daughter of Laokoon and Laniana, therefore she has a little bit Lidia in her blood. The colour is flawlessly aurochs-like, and also the horns are good. 

 

Larissa next to a wildtype coloured cow

Larissa is the largest cow in the Lippeaue and the same breed combination as Linea, with the Chianina mother Laura. 

 

Disselmersch

 

The breeding bull at Disselmersch is Darth Vader III, who became famous as the “jumping bull” on Youtube. He is the son of Londo, who was an F2 Sayaguesa x (Heck x Chianina) and the son of Lamarck, and the cow Laniana. He is 1/32 Lidia. 

 

Guessing by eye, the body size and horn size of the animals at Disselmersch is slightly smaller than in the other herds. 

 

Kleiberg 

 

Linnet was replaced as a breeding bull this year, the new breeding bull is Dominator. He is the son of Laniel and a Sayaguesa cow, therefore mostly Sayaguesa. The horns of this bull are great. The curvature is very aurochs-like, and if they continue growing with this curve they will be perfect. The angle between the horns and snout is rather narrow, but that will be compensated by the horn orientation of other individuals. The horns also have a nice size. He will continue to grow for a couple of years, I am looking forward to see how large he is going to get. 

 

Bionade, the Sayaguesa x Chianina cow, is alive and well. Back in 2017, I measured her at 155 cm at the withers, and she must have grown since then, because she is huge. She came rather close, and I was impressed by how large she is. I am looking forward to the offspring with Dominator, his great horns coupled with her large size surely has a lot of potential. 

 

Another very large cow is Kasmerodia. She has the same deviant colour as 55 443 which might be the recessive e mutation, but her large size and the large horns make her a useful individual. She is the daughter of Loren and Laokoon’s brother, therefore she is more Heck than Sayaguesa yet still she is huge. That shows that genetics work by chance, which is always interesting to see. 

 

Kalandra is a daughter of Linnet and Kalidis, a daughter of Bionade. Her horns are comparably large and the colour is aurochs-like. 

 

The most important question is: did the average quality of the individuals increase over the last few years? I think it did, as cows with inwards-facing horns are now much more common than in 2017, 2015 or 2013. Looking at the horns of most of the individuals, the first impression may be that the tips should face more inwards, but actually the curvature is alright, it is just that they should be oriented a bit more diagonal when viewed in frontal view. To explain what I mean, have a look at the photomanipulation of Lerida. I elevated the horns laterally by a few degrees in the "aurochs picture". Maybe it is best to call this the “lateral horn orientation”, in contrast to the horn orientation relative to the snout. I haven’t realized that this is a factor previously. Once the horns are a bit more laterally elevated, the curvature automatically looks more aurochs-like because the tips face more inwards, although the shape of the horns is actually the same. That way, the horns would resemble those of a lot of aurochs skulls, such as the one from the Gramsberger Museum or that at Asti, Italy. I don’t know how to fix that by breeding in future generations, as many aurochs-like landraces have a horizontal lateral horn orientation. All in all I think the horn curvature of most of the individuals is good and has improved over the last years. 

Regarding the sexual dichromatism, most individuals are coloured correctly. Bulls tend to be black with a dorsal stripe, cows tend to be reddish brown. However, there are also black cows and rarely also cow-coloured bulls, so that the dichromatism is often present but not always. 

Concerning the general colour, most individuals have the right colour phenotype. Half-Chianina individuals have a diluted colour of course, as Chianina has several dilution alleles, some of which are recessive. Selective breeding has to purge these alleles from the population in the long run, but considering that colour is regulated only by a few genes, that’s not all too difficult. 

Regarding the morphology, I think the trunk of the cattle is longer than in the aurochs. This is a general problem for “breeding-back”, no matter which project, as in most taurine cattle the trunk is longer than in the aurochs. Only some zebu landraces have a truly aurochs-like short trunk. This is why I included trunk length in my list of the challenges for “breeding-back”. But in general, Taurus cattle are of course more long-legged than Heck cattle, and also slenderer. 

 

All in all, I think the herds are on a pretty good way. I like all of the current breeding bulls and I am looking forward to see how large they will get and what the horns of Dominator are going to look like when he is fully grown in a few years. I was very impressed by the size of Bionade, Kasmerodia, Linea and Larissa. The horn size of many individuals is within the range of the Holocene European aurochs when skeletons like the Himmelev bull are considered. Of course, hypothetically, crossing-in Watussi for example would increase the horn size but it would also introduce a lot of unwanted traits like a large dewlap, the indicine hump, or a small body size. Backcrossing with Chianina would help to increase the body size, but also increase the frequency of alleles for small horns and colour dilutions – therefore, it is always about finding the right balance and prioritizing certain traits. Otherwise, it would be too easy. 

So far, no individual has been born that comprises all of the desired traits (that goes for all the other “breeding-back” projects as well of course). But I think that basically all of the aurochs traits that are achievable with domestic cattle are present in the gene pool, therefore the first of the milestones for “breeding-back” that I have defined years ago has been accomplished in the Lippeaue.

 

The horses 

 

The Lippeaue reserve is also home to the Konik-Przewalski crosses. These are either bay dun with a standing mane as a Przewalski’s horse, bay dun with a falling mane and rarely also black dun with a standing mane. Most individuals are bay dun in colour because they are most likely heterozygous and the a allele on the Agouti locus (resulting in black dun) is recessive under the A allele (resulting in bay dun), therefore bay dun is the dominant phenotype of most of the crosses. So far, no concrete breeding goal for the phenotype of the crossbreeds has been defined. They are wilder in behaviour than Koniks, which are domestic horses, since Przewalski’s horses, being wild horses, are more difficult to handle than the domesticates. The remaining pure Koniks are sometimes sold as riding horses, which is impossible with the Przewalski’s hybrids because of their wild behaviour. Interestingly, I was told that the legal protection status of the Przewalski’s horse in Germany also goes for the hybrids, what surprised me. Some of the hybrids have already been sold to other grazing projects. This could increase the Przewalski’s influence in the Konik in Germany (the Konik already has introgression from the Przewalski’s horse) in the long run, which I consider a good thing. A haplotype typical for Przewalski’s horses has been found in an ancient DNA sample from a European wild horse stallion, what suggests that the range of the two subspecies was continuous. Therefore, Przewalski’s influence in European landraces is not “unnatural”, and also beneficial because the Przewalski’s horse is a genuine wild horse. In the end, the Przewalski’s horse would likely have recolonized Europe from Asia after the extinction of the European wild horse if it had not been for the anthropogenic obstacles. 

All in all, I think the Taurus cattle in the Lippeaue represent the top-level of current "breeding-back", and also the Przewalski's hybrids are very interesting and have potential. Therefore, it is always great to visit the herds and see the breeding progress.