sutton026

O key, not all that new, but a few weeks old at least. But I haven't had the time yet to post them here because I was busy with my Lippeaue report and university. I only cover the photos here and make no guesses or research on the origin of those animals, because this work has already been done by Roberta on the Carnivora Forum thread .  All of the photos presented here are copyright of Geer vanne Smeed, used with his permission.  Kempen~Broek  The photos here show us mostly bulls, and also the Tudanca x Highland cow that is familiar to us already, plus some young cows that might be Limia or similar-looking crossbreeds. Those He...ah.. Tauros bulls confirm what I guessed back in 2012 already - namely that Highland crosses bred into Southern European breeds will resemble Heck cattle in the early generations. Of course this is no bad thing as such and was to be expected, but Taurus cattle shows us that they will need at least one or two generations more to overcome this hec...

R egarding the quality of the current population: Overall, the herds are very nice. To better compare the Lippeaue cattle presented on the two previous posts ( #1 , #2 ) with the aurochs, here are some of my own artistic interpretations of the wild animal:  Sassenberg cow - mind that the horns only look that small because they are viewed from the side. They might have been more curved than in my drawing. Bull based on the Braunschweig, Sassenberg and Lund specimen The size of Heck cattle has definitely been surpassed with cows having an average size of between 150-155 (which is larger than virtually all Heck bulls and 20 cm taller than Heck cows). I know that three individuals are an insufficient sample size, but these particular animals neither appeared to be considerably smaller or larger than the other ones. The fact that the tallest individual in the herd is a cow and that most bulls are probably between 150-160cm tall does not necessarily imply that Taurus cattle has little si...

T he previous post covered three of the two current herds in the Lippeaue from my 2015 trip. This post is on the remaining two, Klostermersch-Südseite and Hellinghauser Mersch.  (I claim copyright for my photos, please do not use without permission) Klostermersch-Südseite In 2013, I hoped that this son of Lamarck would become a breeding bull, since he looked quite promising to me. Well, he is now, and his name is Londo. He looks a lot like his father, his horns are even a bit thicker. His deficiency compared to Lamarck are his shorter legs and the longer trunk, and he is comparably small. But he is a “true F2” because both his parents were of the same cross combination ( his mother  84 024 is a fullblood sister of his father), and so he should be more genetically stable (Lamarck should actually be not stable at all). Might this be more important than his undesirable traits? I think we cannot know. But he will be used until a better bull will be available. Maybe the bull calf ...