sutton026

W ith a major delay, I finally do my post on the horses in the Lippeaue reserve, Germany, today. I already covered them in my 2013 post , but on my trip in 2015 I gathered some more material, and the herds changed a bit as well. As it is the case in so many reserves for landscape conservation, horses and cattle share the area because they complement each other in their grazing activity and both are native species. I don't know the total number of horses in the Lippeaue, perhaps about 40 individuals but that is only a guess. The horse herd at Disselmersch consists of mostly pure Koniks, plus one Konik x Przewalski hybrid. The herd at Hellinghauser Mersch is, as far as I can see, completely mixed. They had a pure Konik stallion in the herd until at least 2013, but that one seems to be gone now. Now there are 50% Przewalski hybrids, 25% Przewalski and 75% Konik hybrids as much as a pure Przewalski mare. The 50-50 hybrids resemble a pure Przewalski rather close, except that the short ...

T he National Park Hortobagy, Hungary, is home to the largest Taurus cattle population. I did a post on this herd using information I got from from Claudia Zimmermann and István Sándor in March 2014, also with photos. Now, two years later, this post deserves a little update, so I contacted István Sándor again. I was provided with lots of photos and information, many thanks! All the photos are courtesy of István Sándor, so please do not replicate without permission. The herd numbers approximately 600 individuals today, a good part of them are calves (about 130 calves get born every year). The population is of course still heterogeneous, but they select strongly. Most frequent undesired traits are insufficient body size, horn curvature or thin horns, I was told. I'd expect colour to be variable as well.  After calving season, the bulls that are chosen for breeding are allowed to join the cows for mating (two or three bulls per season). They compete with each other for breeding rights...

S ince 1996, the crossbreeding in the Lippeaue reserve, North-Rhine Westphalia, produced hundreds of Taurus cattle. The roughly 100 individuals from 2013 and 2015 I presented on this blog so far are not representative for this quantity and gene pool, of course. There are plenty of now-dead or removed individuals that may be interesting for a number of reasons; either they look good and left a strong mark in the population, or, the contrary, they turned out to look unsatisfying or even “weird”, revealing what is present in the gene pool beside the good individuals. Or, they may be interesting just because of their ancestry or the breed combination they represent. In any case, they show the variation that is present in the population. To avoid confusion: Hellinghauser Mersch, Klostermersch-Nord, Klostermersch-Süd and Disselmersch are all sub-herds within the Lippeaue reserve. I was provided an extensive, qualitative photo archive documenting the Taurus population over more than ten years...