sutton026

M y first trip to the Lippeaue , the largest Taurus cattle breeding site in Germany and where the breed had its start, was in 2013. Now, two years later, I visited the reserve Naturreservat Lippeauen in Germany again to see how the herd developed within the the last two years.  At the moment I am preparing a large, extensive post on my trip and the animals with lots of pictures, but it will take its time until it is finished. So for now, a little teaser in form of a photo: 

T he whole aurochs issue is centred almost entirely around the European subspecies, B. p. primigenius because it is the best-documented subspecies and survived the longest. The Indian aurochs, the wild ancestor of the zebu, was the first one to disappear and is very enigmatic. There are only few skeletal remains (a number of crania, some postcranial material), no artistic depictions have been claimed to show this population nor are there written accounts. What we can infer from the fossil-subfossil record is that namadicus was smaller than primigenius (van Vuure 2005 mentions that some crania were slightly smaller than those female Pleistocene primigenius). But proportionally, its horns were larger and more wide-ranging (the only graphic representation of namadicus material I was able to find is that skull ). Therefore, much of its appearance is unknown. In a post I did two years ago , I tried to deduce some additional traits based on the scarce info we have and what seems credible l...

T oday I was addressed to an article by derstandard.at by Margret Bunzel-Drüke from the ABU. It reports that a small starter herd of Tauros cattle have arrived in the CZ Republic. See here  or here , for example. You see some photos of the herd on each of these links.   It has been prepared to set up a Tauros site in this country since at least 2010 if I remember correctly, now a herd of one bull and five cows accompanied by 15 Exmoor ponies have been released in the ex-military base Milovice on 40 hectares.  The background of these six animals is nebulous to me as usual. They are all rather young, so they might be second-generation crosses (at least some of them). I think that this cow , because of the shape and size of its horns, is likely to be half Highland x Maremmana, I have no idea what the father might be. The other long horned cow on the larger photo , might be Maremmana x Sayaguesa based on its looks, or of the same combination as the other one (because of...

T he first breeding site of the Uruz Project to be set up was Kloster Lorsch, Hessen, Germany. It is run by the Freilichtlabor Lauresham and the Förderkreis Große Pflanzenfresser im Kreis Bergstraße e.V., composed of a herd of very useful Chianina cows plus a young Watussi bull that had died in winter 14/15, delaying the project. Recently both the groups mentioned plus Felix Hohmeyer (cooperating with them) quitted the cooperation with the True Nature Foundation and the Uruz Project. Therefore the herds at Lorsch and Bielefeld are not part of the UP anymore, therefore the Freilichtlabor and the Förderkreis Große Pflanzenfresser are doing breeding-back on their own now. The herd at Lorsch currently consists of Chianina cows only, but they got a new young Watussi bull that is kept somewhere else until he is old enough (you might wonder why they don't by an adult one in the first place, the reason is that there was none available). The herd at Bielefeld currently consists, as planned,...