I am really busy with my studies at the moment and that won't change for a long time, that's why the quantity and quality of my posts here decreased significantly during the last months. So it is not a lack of inspiration... in fact I have a lot of ideas of things to write about. For example, I did way too less on the phylogeny/genetics of cattle and aurochs. Also, I have been planning to discuss the question whether Europe was a wholly forested or open habitat without human influence, or the Pleistocene extinctions. I want to do more species diversification as well, including also other extinct animals that are not necessarily connected to "breeding-back". I am also working on a list of locations where Wisent live in feral or semi-feral conditions, and planning at least one post on bison-cattle hybridization. And the African and Indian aurochs deserve more attention here. I have been planning life restorations of both for a long time now and never got to it. I also want to finally finish my dedomestication series, but I simply do not have the time for it (apart from that, the lack of empirical basis on this issue is demotivating as well). There's a number of short posts on my list as well, such as whether the aurochs had a "mane" or not (if you wonder what that is supposed to mean, stay tuned), breeding-back with other domestic species as a "test", an overview and personal review of the existing Aurochs projects, a list of extinct species that I think could possibly be cloned et cetera. And, of course, updates and news from projects or other issues. For example, there was something going on with the Taurus bulls at Lippeaue that is worth to be mentioned here.
By the way, I am very happy to see that I still have 150-300 clicks on average per day. Thanks to my readers!
Sunday, 5 October 2014
Sunday, 14 September 2014
Female aurochs remastered
I was thinking about my reconstructions of aurochs females lately and found that I was reconstructing them too slim when I look at the skeletons. There seemingly are not as many mounted female aurochs skeletons as there are bulls (why? is there a fossil sex bias, or are they not mounted as often because they are less impressive? Both explanations don't sound credible to me), so I always have to use the cow skeletons from/at Sassenberg and Cambridge. I had a look at the skeletons recently and realized that my previous reconstructions are too slim. The ribcage of the skeletons is deeper and the leg bones probably indicate more massive limbs. Apart from that, I think I exaggerated the slenderness of the abdomen. I used young Lidia cows as a comparison, but looking at the original skeletons, female Gaurs and Bantengs but also Wisents, I now think the abdomen should be heavier.
Both these reconstructions show the Sassenberg specimen (the horn tips in the lower restoration do not curve correctly inwards by the way).
A while ago I edited the abdomen of both my cow and bull model on the photos showing them in profile, and they immediately looked more natural. But I still felt the cow wasn't entirely correct, especially when considering that the Cambridge specimen is a bit heavier than the one from Sassenberg. So I did a new reconstruction, again based directly on tracking out the original skeleton. This time I also decided not to show the animal in a short and shiny summer coat like I always did before, but in a shaggier coat that cattle have during fall before developing a full winter fur coat. I gave it a chestnut-brown colour comparable to deer, which is one way to interpret Schneeberger's text and also what Cis van Vuure considers a likely colour for female aurochs. As a template for that colour I used Maronesa and Heck cattle cows of the Wörth lineage. I also made the colour a little bit duller and darker, because cattle fur is darker during winter than during summer (more on that in a future post). This is the result:
I am very happy with the result. The animal looks much more credible and natural than in my previous reconstructions and also better fits the original skeleton. It is also satisfying that the discrepancy between the build of female aurochs and the cows of many of the primitive breeds seems to be not as big as I previously assumed. The trunk of Chianina, on the other hand, is not nearly as deep (see here, for example). This bears the risk of some crossbreeds to have an actually too slender thorax.
One reason why I chose the darker brown colour for this individual is that I think it is a credible and suitable colour for Central European landscape. Just look at Wisents and Red deer. This colour also is present in the fall-winter coat of a lot of Heck cattle at Oostvaardersplassen, and they seem very well camouflaged:
However, the reddish-brown or even orangish-brown colour shades as much as those cows with a nearly totally black colour and a reddish saddle definitely existed, as we know trough cave paintings and the fact that those colours are very widespread among primitive cattle. I am going to do differently coloured versions of my reconstruction above when I have the time for it.
By the way, the Sassenberg individual was not small-horned as it might look at this drawing. The horns just look that way in profile view, as their width is not visible at this perspective.
A while ago I edited the abdomen of both my cow and bull model on the photos showing them in profile, and they immediately looked more natural. But I still felt the cow wasn't entirely correct, especially when considering that the Cambridge specimen is a bit heavier than the one from Sassenberg. So I did a new reconstruction, again based directly on tracking out the original skeleton. This time I also decided not to show the animal in a short and shiny summer coat like I always did before, but in a shaggier coat that cattle have during fall before developing a full winter fur coat. I gave it a chestnut-brown colour comparable to deer, which is one way to interpret Schneeberger's text and also what Cis van Vuure considers a likely colour for female aurochs. As a template for that colour I used Maronesa and Heck cattle cows of the Wörth lineage. I also made the colour a little bit duller and darker, because cattle fur is darker during winter than during summer (more on that in a future post). This is the result:
One reason why I chose the darker brown colour for this individual is that I think it is a credible and suitable colour for Central European landscape. Just look at Wisents and Red deer. This colour also is present in the fall-winter coat of a lot of Heck cattle at Oostvaardersplassen, and they seem very well camouflaged:
By the way, the Sassenberg individual was not small-horned as it might look at this drawing. The horns just look that way in profile view, as their width is not visible at this perspective.
Monday, 1 September 2014
Inbreeding as an option to fixate aurochs traits?
Inbreeding or line breeding is common in animal breeding and basically is reproduction within a small population of closely related individuals reducing genetic diversity. It causes homozygosity and bears the risk of deleterious recessive alleles becoming fixed, reducing the biological fitness of the population and causing an inbreeding depression. But homozygosity also creates a uniform phenotype and therefore might be a method to create a more or less homogeneous, aurochs-like cattle population. In this post I am going to outline a little thought experiment I came up with about a week or so ago.
The Heck cattle herd on Insel Wörth, Bavaria, is the only closed line within Heck cattle to date. The herd is experiencing inbreeding since the 1980s, since no cattle from other locations were included and consequently all herd members are closely related. Large, thick and well-curved horns are very common in the herd, and many individuals have a similar colour. But there are deviant examples as well, such as cows that are light-brown or reddish with almost no dark areas on head and neck, or with small and thin horns. There currently is one bull with rather steppe cattle-like horns on the island, and there was another cow with a rather straight horn curvature. Bulls with a greyish-beige saddle apparently appear regularly, I would say perhaps 50%, and I was told that the inheritance of horn sizes within the herd works by chance: very large-horned parents sometimes give birth to thin-horned individuals and vice versa.
Why is the Wörth herd still not stable although it is a closed inbred line?
I thought about this and, as an amateur in genetics, came up with the idea that it might be back-crossing with heterozygous parents might be the key factor that made inbreeding inefficient in this herd. Back-crossing with a heterozygous parent makes little sense to me as there is a 0,5 probability that the parent passes on the undesired allele again, what, assuming that the offspring it was mated into is heterozygous as well, does not change anything, or, assuming that the offspring is homozygous, might even produce a heterozygous calf again and therefore make a step backwards. As a result, as far as I understand, a heterozygous individual cannot stabilize a herd, no matter how often it is mated to its offspring again. A homozygous bull, on the other hand, would of course. I think this might be true of "qualitative" traits that are controlled by few loci such as coat colour as much as "quantitative" traits that are controlled by many loci (and environment which we assume to be stable here) such as body size.
True inbreeding lines created in the laboratory with rats, mice and other model organisms have a homozygosity level of roughly 99%. The important difference in this kind of inbreeding is that exclusively siblings are mated to each other. The rule of thumb is that at least 20 generations are needed to achieve this high level. The time span to do the same with cattle would be endless, but 99% is surely much beyond the extent of homozygosity that is needed for a optically more or less homogeneous aurochs-like breed.
But it inspired me for thinking about sibling-matings as an option speed up the process of stabilizing the "breeding-back" results. I would start with a P-generation herd that is composed of bulls of one suited breed and cows of another breed that complement each other in terms of aurochs resemblance (or, alternatively, good-looking individuals of existing "breeding back" projects/breeds, wich would have a less predictable offspring on the other hand). The offspring they produce would form a new F1 herd with calf that have a more or less similar appearance to each other (except you work with very heterozygous parents like the already existing "breeding-back" cattle). They would be mated to each other and then a F2 herd would be created (by the way, the P and F1 would still exist and produce offspring, which would be consistently moved to the existing F1 and F2 herds etc.), and this generation would show a more or less continuous spectrum of the traits present in both breeds. Now, strong selection is ready to start. That scheme should be carried out until a herd is formed of which one can be sure that the individuals are sufficiently homogeneous, externally and genetically. I would then choose the best bull, fuse all the herds and remove all the other bulls. Using such a bull which would be mostly homozygous for the desired traits would then stabilize and improve the whole herd and create a larger, sufficiently homogeneous and stable line of aurochs-like cattle that can be used to improve other herds of any chosen breed/project.
If this concept worked, there still would be some problems. First of all, one would need a lot of place for all those herds - like usual the larger the herds the better it is - and therefore also a lot of money. And of course there will be some animals that suffer from inbreeding depression and have to be selected out. This is called "purging", which is common in laboratory line breeding and also saved the highly inbred Chillingham cattle from extinction. The number of animals that would not be used for further breeding would be quite high, depending on how the strong the selection would be. They could be sold for meat production or to other breeders, as long as the looks of those cattle is appealing to them.
Surely the amount of inbreeding would be high for such a lineage, especially when using only two founder animals as suggested above (personally, I would use a good Wörth-Heck cow with large horns and a very large, slender and well-shaped bull, perhaps one of these "Maltese Oxen"). Probably most people would fear that selecting only against deleterious alleles and only for aurochs-like looks would reduce the hardiness or resistance to diseases. I don't really worry about the hardiness of the cattle, as all aurochs-like cattle seem to be very hardy. However, the resistance against diseases might get reduced due to genetic drift if the other breed is not as resistant against one particular disease than the other. But as described above, my purpose is not to create only one closed line that looks as aurochs-like as possible, but to use animals of such a very stable line to increase the similarity with the aurochs of other aurochs projects, or simply breeds of interest, as a whole. Apart from that, there could be other, parallele projects doing the same but using other breeds, and uniting those stable lines would increase the gene pool. Using homozygous breeding bulls (but also cows of course), will speed up the fixation of the desirable features for any project or breeder who wants to have very aurochs-like cattle without having deviant traits appearing regularly.
I think the traditional scheme of just crossing and selecting the best-looking animals and selecting out the bad-looking ones is not very effective or at least takes a lot of time. Especially quantitative traits such as horn size or body size show only a slow response to selection (see here, for example). Whether or not such a concept is practically feasible or effective, or if any of the existing projects/breeders would be interested to try it, it is a nice little thought experiment of mine as being a total amateur in genetics. If there is anything incorrect or imprecise in this text, or if the idea is flawed by any technical reasons, I would be pleased if somebody more knowledgable would point it out to me.
The Heck cattle herd on Insel Wörth, Bavaria, is the only closed line within Heck cattle to date. The herd is experiencing inbreeding since the 1980s, since no cattle from other locations were included and consequently all herd members are closely related. Large, thick and well-curved horns are very common in the herd, and many individuals have a similar colour. But there are deviant examples as well, such as cows that are light-brown or reddish with almost no dark areas on head and neck, or with small and thin horns. There currently is one bull with rather steppe cattle-like horns on the island, and there was another cow with a rather straight horn curvature. Bulls with a greyish-beige saddle apparently appear regularly, I would say perhaps 50%, and I was told that the inheritance of horn sizes within the herd works by chance: very large-horned parents sometimes give birth to thin-horned individuals and vice versa.
Why is the Wörth herd still not stable although it is a closed inbred line?
 |
| Why do such small-horned, tan-coloured cows still appear in the Wörth lineage? |
True inbreeding lines created in the laboratory with rats, mice and other model organisms have a homozygosity level of roughly 99%. The important difference in this kind of inbreeding is that exclusively siblings are mated to each other. The rule of thumb is that at least 20 generations are needed to achieve this high level. The time span to do the same with cattle would be endless, but 99% is surely much beyond the extent of homozygosity that is needed for a optically more or less homogeneous aurochs-like breed.
But it inspired me for thinking about sibling-matings as an option speed up the process of stabilizing the "breeding-back" results. I would start with a P-generation herd that is composed of bulls of one suited breed and cows of another breed that complement each other in terms of aurochs resemblance (or, alternatively, good-looking individuals of existing "breeding back" projects/breeds, wich would have a less predictable offspring on the other hand). The offspring they produce would form a new F1 herd with calf that have a more or less similar appearance to each other (except you work with very heterozygous parents like the already existing "breeding-back" cattle). They would be mated to each other and then a F2 herd would be created (by the way, the P and F1 would still exist and produce offspring, which would be consistently moved to the existing F1 and F2 herds etc.), and this generation would show a more or less continuous spectrum of the traits present in both breeds. Now, strong selection is ready to start. That scheme should be carried out until a herd is formed of which one can be sure that the individuals are sufficiently homogeneous, externally and genetically. I would then choose the best bull, fuse all the herds and remove all the other bulls. Using such a bull which would be mostly homozygous for the desired traits would then stabilize and improve the whole herd and create a larger, sufficiently homogeneous and stable line of aurochs-like cattle that can be used to improve other herds of any chosen breed/project.
If this concept worked, there still would be some problems. First of all, one would need a lot of place for all those herds - like usual the larger the herds the better it is - and therefore also a lot of money. And of course there will be some animals that suffer from inbreeding depression and have to be selected out. This is called "purging", which is common in laboratory line breeding and also saved the highly inbred Chillingham cattle from extinction. The number of animals that would not be used for further breeding would be quite high, depending on how the strong the selection would be. They could be sold for meat production or to other breeders, as long as the looks of those cattle is appealing to them.
Surely the amount of inbreeding would be high for such a lineage, especially when using only two founder animals as suggested above (personally, I would use a good Wörth-Heck cow with large horns and a very large, slender and well-shaped bull, perhaps one of these "Maltese Oxen"). Probably most people would fear that selecting only against deleterious alleles and only for aurochs-like looks would reduce the hardiness or resistance to diseases. I don't really worry about the hardiness of the cattle, as all aurochs-like cattle seem to be very hardy. However, the resistance against diseases might get reduced due to genetic drift if the other breed is not as resistant against one particular disease than the other. But as described above, my purpose is not to create only one closed line that looks as aurochs-like as possible, but to use animals of such a very stable line to increase the similarity with the aurochs of other aurochs projects, or simply breeds of interest, as a whole. Apart from that, there could be other, parallele projects doing the same but using other breeds, and uniting those stable lines would increase the gene pool. Using homozygous breeding bulls (but also cows of course), will speed up the fixation of the desirable features for any project or breeder who wants to have very aurochs-like cattle without having deviant traits appearing regularly.
I think the traditional scheme of just crossing and selecting the best-looking animals and selecting out the bad-looking ones is not very effective or at least takes a lot of time. Especially quantitative traits such as horn size or body size show only a slow response to selection (see here, for example). Whether or not such a concept is practically feasible or effective, or if any of the existing projects/breeders would be interested to try it, it is a nice little thought experiment of mine as being a total amateur in genetics. If there is anything incorrect or imprecise in this text, or if the idea is flawed by any technical reasons, I would be pleased if somebody more knowledgable would point it out to me.
Saturday, 23 August 2014
New photos from Kempen~Broek
Ok, new is not entirely correct as these photos were published at weertnatuur.blogspot.com in february this year (check out that blog, it has a lot of interesting photos and posts). But I think they might be new to a lot of people, so I post them here.
Kempen~Broek is, as far as I understand based on the information I have, home to a number of Tauros herds. Visit Theo van der Heijden's youtube channel for some high-quality videos from Kempen~Broek. The photos below show a herd of Maremmana cows covered by a young Maronesa bull and a herd of Limia cows (at least) covered by a Maremmana bull.
I don't know the identity of the young bull at the left of the uppermost photo, but it is surely not the son of the young Maronesa bull. To be honest, the bulls actually look disappointing to me. The Maronesa's horns probably will continue to grow and the hump might develop a little more, but he will still be rather stubby - additionally to the undesired Maronesa features that were to be expected, the short face and small size. I am looking forward to see the crossbreeds with Maremmana. Some individuals might be slenderer and have better proportions, and a horn orientation intermediate between Maremmana and Maronesa would be the right angle, but I don't expect large animals to arise from that combination.
The Maremmana bull is really longish and the legs are short, he has the proportions and body shape of a Heck bull. I would be surprised if this bull reaches 150 cm at the withers because of the Limia cow next to him. The horn size is ok, but considering that he will produce offspring with Limia and Pajuna cows and subsequently with those crossbreeds, it will probably take its time until the horn size of the whole herd has reached the desired level. The skull is definitely to short, but at least not as compressed as in Maronesa. I used to think that large size, good body proportions and shape, large horns and a long snout are precious Maremmana characteristics, but after all the photos and videos I recently saw I start to doubt that.
All in all I think that it would be too optimistic to expect TaurOs cattle that surpass current Taurus cattle within the next ten or more years, because both breeds/projects have their pro's and con's and, in sum, many of the founding individuals of the Tauros Project look as good as many current Taurus cattle (watch this promotion video, you see a lot of very nice animals there). But I fear it won't be easy for TaurOs to achieve traits like really large size and sufficiently large horns without having breeds that have these traits in a very prominent way (like Chianina for size, or Watussi or large-horned Heck cattle for the horns).
The fact that a number of the founding individuals in TaurOs disappointed me is not meant as a critique, that would be unfair. I know it is very difficult to track down the best individuals and if you find them you still have to hope they are for sale and then try to export them. It's not easy, so it is not surprising that some individuals used in an aurochs projects do not have all the desirable features present in their breed.
Kempen~Broek is, as far as I understand based on the information I have, home to a number of Tauros herds. Visit Theo van der Heijden's youtube channel for some high-quality videos from Kempen~Broek. The photos below show a herd of Maremmana cows covered by a young Maronesa bull and a herd of Limia cows (at least) covered by a Maremmana bull.
The Maremmana bull is really longish and the legs are short, he has the proportions and body shape of a Heck bull. I would be surprised if this bull reaches 150 cm at the withers because of the Limia cow next to him. The horn size is ok, but considering that he will produce offspring with Limia and Pajuna cows and subsequently with those crossbreeds, it will probably take its time until the horn size of the whole herd has reached the desired level. The skull is definitely to short, but at least not as compressed as in Maronesa. I used to think that large size, good body proportions and shape, large horns and a long snout are precious Maremmana characteristics, but after all the photos and videos I recently saw I start to doubt that.
All in all I think that it would be too optimistic to expect TaurOs cattle that surpass current Taurus cattle within the next ten or more years, because both breeds/projects have their pro's and con's and, in sum, many of the founding individuals of the Tauros Project look as good as many current Taurus cattle (watch this promotion video, you see a lot of very nice animals there). But I fear it won't be easy for TaurOs to achieve traits like really large size and sufficiently large horns without having breeds that have these traits in a very prominent way (like Chianina for size, or Watussi or large-horned Heck cattle for the horns).
The fact that a number of the founding individuals in TaurOs disappointed me is not meant as a critique, that would be unfair. I know it is very difficult to track down the best individuals and if you find them you still have to hope they are for sale and then try to export them. It's not easy, so it is not surprising that some individuals used in an aurochs projects do not have all the desirable features present in their breed.
Tuesday, 15 July 2014
Sayaguesa x Chianina
Besides all possible combinations of Sayaguesa, Chianina and Heck owned by the ABU in the Lippeaue reserve, there are also a few Sayaguesa x Chianina crossbreeds - all of them (true) F1 yet. This combination is very interesting to me as it has the potential to produce really large and long-legged cattle and it might show whether Chianina has retained sexual dichromatism to some degree masked beneath all their dilution factors or not.
One of these crossbreeds - a cow named Bionade - was already introduced in this post.
Actually it is unnecessary to examine the looks of a first-generation crossbreed because it does genetically not make sense, but let's do it for fun. Its colour is definitely wildtype-coloured but very diluted. The legs are long and the trunk short, but the head is small and the horns point skywards. I am curious whether the head will grow more elongated (the cow was about 2 years old when I took that photo). I don't remember well enough to estimate her size.
I was very curious what a bull of this combination would look like, and few days ago Matthias Scharf from the ABU kindly provided me with a recent photo:
Although one photo is not enough to judge the looks of an animal 100% accurately, it is obvious that its trunk is short and its legs are long too. The head and horns are small too, as in the cow. Nevertheless, the hump is well-developed, especially for a bull of that age. I was told that he looks a bit meaty from behind. Looking at his colour I noticed that his coat tends towards a grayish colour, while Bionade is definitely coloured in very light brown. Perhaps this is the confirm that Chianina retained sexual dichromatism beneath their dilution factors. Why? Because Sayaguesa, having black or nearly-black cows, probably did not contribute this feature.
Now imagine a herd composed exclusively of F1 Sayaguesa x Chianina animals. Considering the long generation span of cattle, efficient linebreeding to unite all the desired features and clear off all undesired traits would take very long. But perhaps (true) F2 or F3 would be enough to get some acceptable cattle that are large, long-legged and have a muscular and slender body plus a well-developed hump and not that much dilution factors. Probably sexual dichromatism would surface in a number of individuals (Perhaps an undiluted cow of this combination might have a similar colour to this cow which is mainly composed of these two breeds).
Despite the probably still quite small horns, such animals surely would be prime breeding bulls for any Heck/Taurus herd. The bull above most likely will not become a breeding bull in the Lippeaue, but I hope he won't get slaughtered. He probably would be helpful to a herd like those at Wörth or the Neandertal, because he adds what they usually lack.
One of these crossbreeds - a cow named Bionade - was already introduced in this post.
I was very curious what a bull of this combination would look like, and few days ago Matthias Scharf from the ABU kindly provided me with a recent photo:
Now imagine a herd composed exclusively of F1 Sayaguesa x Chianina animals. Considering the long generation span of cattle, efficient linebreeding to unite all the desired features and clear off all undesired traits would take very long. But perhaps (true) F2 or F3 would be enough to get some acceptable cattle that are large, long-legged and have a muscular and slender body plus a well-developed hump and not that much dilution factors. Probably sexual dichromatism would surface in a number of individuals (Perhaps an undiluted cow of this combination might have a similar colour to this cow which is mainly composed of these two breeds).
Despite the probably still quite small horns, such animals surely would be prime breeding bulls for any Heck/Taurus herd. The bull above most likely will not become a breeding bull in the Lippeaue, but I hope he won't get slaughtered. He probably would be helpful to a herd like those at Wörth or the Neandertal, because he adds what they usually lack.
Saturday, 12 July 2014
Genealogy of some Lippeaue cattle
This is the last post of this little Taurus cattle series, I promise. Using an extremely helpful list I was given when I visited the Lippeaue plus what I already, I made a genealogical table of a very small portion of the Taurus cattle currently (or, summer 2013) used there. This table might be updated if I made any wrong assumptions.
Photos of
Eloisia, Lancelot, Lucio, Luca and Ludovica: © ABU
Churro: © Peter von Burg (Check out his cool archive!)
All the other photos were taken by myself.
As you see, all crosses in this selection descend from one Heck bull and one Chianina cow, while there are three Sayaguesa. Don't worry, there are of course a lot more founding individuals, particularly Heck cows I assume.
Photos of
Eloisia, Lancelot, Lucio, Luca and Ludovica: © ABU
Churro: © Peter von Burg (Check out his cool archive!)
All the other photos were taken by myself.
As you see, all crosses in this selection descend from one Heck bull and one Chianina cow, while there are three Sayaguesa. Don't worry, there are of course a lot more founding individuals, particularly Heck cows I assume.
Thursday, 10 July 2014
Heck, or Taurus?
Taurus cattle become increasingly widespread among Heck cattle thanks to their increased resemblance to the aurochs. Recently, some Taurus cattle (or Taurus-influenced Hecks) were even imported in the Netherlands. The inclusion of Taurus individuals into un-crossed Heck herds of course increases the primitive looks of Heck cattle as a whole, so it should be seen as a positive trend. Therefore I don't think that Taurus cattle and Heck cattle should be regarded as separate breeds (apart from that, Taurus cattle is no "finished" breed yet but still in a crossbreeding phase). I see Taurus cattle as an advanced form of Heck cattle. In this post I am going to present some photos of Taurus-influenced "usual" Heck cattle - I define them as Heck cattle that are not part of conscious crossbreeding or tagged as Taurus, and that have a large portion of un-crossed Hecks in their genealogy. If the trend of mixing Taurus and non-Taurus Hecks keeps up, it will probably get hard to distinguish between both in the future, which is, again, positive. I hope that one day all Heck cattle will be influenced by the breeds used for Taurus cattle, perhaps except some herds in zoos for nostalgic reasons.
Saturday, 5 July 2014
The Taurus cattle at Lille Vildmose
Denmark was
the second country after Germany to breed a herd of Taurus cattle. They started
in 2003 with a number of individuals from the Lippeaue. Since you find a
precise description of the history of that herd and the selection criteria at
Vildmose on this thread (post #1051 and following), I am not going to go over
it in great detail here.
The early
breeding bull in this herd was a Chianina x Heck named Leonardo, now
slaughtered and half-blood brother of Luca and also one of the earliest, if not
the first, Chianina-cross at the Lippeaue. As an F1, he had a full set of
Chianina chromosomes and a full set of Heck chromosomes to pass on to his
offspring. As a consequence, many of those cattle are rather Chianina-influenced,
which is a) good for achieving long legs, a slender body and large size, b)
results in many individuals with a diluted fur colour. However, the influence
of Sayaguesa is not totally absent, some of them have nice elongate snouts, and
there are in fact individuals with an authentic aurochs colour. They also imported Lidia cows, but did not continue using them or their offspring because of their temperament.
Here are
some photos of those cattle that I took from their status reports (see the
Carnivora thread):
 |
| 1 |
 |
| 2 |
 |
| 3 |
 |
| 4 |
 |
| 5 |
 |
| 6 |
 |
| 7-1 |
 |
| 7-2 |
 |
| 8 |
 |
| 9 |
 |
| 10 |
 |
| 11 |
 |
| 12 |
 |
| 13 |
 |
| 14 |
 |
| 15 |
 |
| 16 |
 |
| 17 |
 |
| 18 |
 |
| 19 |
 |
| 20 |
 |
| 21 |
 |
| 22 |
 |
| 23 |
 |
| 24 |
 |
| 25 |
 |
| 26 |
 |
| 27 |
 |
| 28 |
 |
| 29 |
 |
| 30 |
The cows on
#1 and #2 are obviously Sayaguesa-influenced. #3 probably shows one of Leonardo’s
sons, and #4 shows Leonardo with the rest of the herd. The cows on #7-2, #11 and
#14 have a nice slender and long-legged body, although they have – the
exception of the latter one – a rather diluted colour. #29 shows a part of the
herd, along with a bull that is very likely another son of Leonardo (the same
as the one on #21?). While the bull on #13 seemingly looks like usual Heck
bull, those on #21 and #24 look cool to me because of their 1:1 trunk
length/withers height relation – and so is the cow on #23. Rather awesome in my
opinion. Surely, their diluted colour is not desirable, but colour is regulated
by only a few loci so I do not worry that much about it. I simply consider
proportions, body size and body shape more important at this stage. When you
look at the bull on #12 and remember the photos I took at the Lippeaue, you
might realize that this bull has the same colour as “Larissa” (see here), a
Chianina x 25% Chianina cow. If my knowledge on cattle coat colour genetics is
correct, both individuals should be heterozygous for the Dun dilution allele,
which results in a tan colouration (see Leonardo, or Luca linked above), homozygous for
the Agouti dilution which causes the whitish base colour.
None of the
individuals we see in the status reports have remarkable horns – neither in
regards to dimensions nor curvature.
To sum it
up, the herd at Lille Vildmose, mostly composed of individuals descending from
Heck and Chianina but also Sayaguesa influence, has the potential to give rise
to large and well-proportioned animals, and some also have elongated snouts.
But the Chianina influence produces many individuals with diluted fur colour,
and the horns are not good. They use 3 Sayaguesa bulls as new breeding bulls
now. This should help to clear of all the dilution alleles and increase the
snout length. It also must be expected that more individuals with
forwards-facing horns have been born thanks to the new bulls (although the
horns probably will not get perfect yet, Sayaguesa only rarely have
inwards-facing horns and the dimensions are still insufficient).
We should
mind that this post and those in the forum are based on status reports from
several years ago, so that we do not know the most recent breeding results and
the current state of the herd. I hope they are not going to use the Sayaguesa
bulls for too long, otherwise the herd gets “Sayaguesa-ized” and becomes more
and more like that breed, while the chance for achieving individuals exceeding
a size of 165 cm gets ever smaller. A 170 cm Taurus bull is outstanding yet, in
Denmark as much as in Germany and Hungary.
What
worries me as well are the selection criteria (see the thread). For example,
they accept saddles for bulls and wholly black cows, what means that no
selection for colour dimorphism takes place.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)