sutton026

S everal Sayaguesa x Chianina cross animals have been born in the Lippeaue so far, when the Sayaguesa bull Churro covered the Chianina cows at Klostermersch. Two cows of that combination are still in the Lippeaue population ( Bionade and 79 810 ). Both cows have a diluted coat colour, which is to be expected since Chianina has mutated alleles on at least two dilution loci (Agouti and Dun, Olson 1999), and at least one of them is semi-dominant. Heck x Chianina cows are diluted as well.  Heck x Chianina bulls had a diluted fur colour as well, but to varying extent. Leonardo, the half-Chianina bull that was sold to Denmark, had a light colour saddle but had black-coloured areas too. Luca, a half-Chianina bull that was covered here extensively already, was mostly coloured in dark brown with much beige areas (mind that winter coat is always darker than summer coat in cattle).  So we would expect a Sayaguesa x Chianina bull to have a colour similar to that of Heck x Chianina bulls. ...

G erman actor Daniel Brühl is to play Lutz Heck in a war drama film scheduled to be released next year.  The film, directed by Nici Caro, is named "The Zookeper's Wife" and covers the story of  Dr. Jan Żabiński, director of the Warsaw zoo and his wife Antonia, who saved many lives during the German occupation of Poland ( see here ). Apparently, Lutz Heck's character is to be in this movie too.  Daniel Brühl recently appeared in movies like Captain America: Civil War (2016), or Rush (2013), where he stars as the Austrian Forumula 1 driver Niki Lauda.  I guess Lutz Heck never thought that his person is going to appear in a British-American movie production, neither did I. I am looking forward to see Brühl as Heck, since his portrayal of Lauda on screen was awesomely authentic; and maybe one or two times the aurochs might be mentioned as well. 

A lthough there has been a setback for the project recently, there are good news from the Auerrind project. They just set up a breeding herd composed of Thando, the young Watussi bull, and three young Sayaguesa cows plus two young Maremmana cows at Lorsch.  The reason behind that is that Thando is still not ready to cover the Chianina cows, as originally planned, but the time can be seized to produce some experimental crosses. I am happy because the combination Watussi x Sayaguesa will be interesting to see; I think that a cross animal with a high portion of Sayaguesa and Watussi influence has the potential to optically resemble the aurochs to a large extent, especially because the Sayaguesa the Auerrindprojekt is working with are from a good herd. Of course the work would not be done with that alone, especially because the sensitivity to cold climate of Watussi needs to be compensated, but without question the results will be very interesting to look at.  Photo owned by aue...

T his post has been made possible by Peter Stockwell from the UK who addressed me to this specimen and provided me with interesting photos and information – many thanks for all the effort! The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, Cambridge, UK, has several skulls or skull fragments on display labelled as aurochs. But one of them looks really atypical in having upright horns of a comparably weak curvature. The orientation of aurochs horns in relation to the skull usually varies from 70° to 50° according to Van Vuure 2005, some skulls might slightly brake the rule but it is apparent even from that broken frontal bone that the horns of this individuals seem to have an angle of beyond 90°, perhaps even 100°. Actually, these horns are barely like those of any other known aurochs crania but resemble those of many domestic cattle forms. Some aurochs skulls, such as that of the Vig specimen, have horns that are more upright than the average. And the curvature varies from tight and narrow to more...

I t has been long ago since my last post. The reason behind that is that I had a busy semester at university, but now the summer has started and I have some time for the blog and artworks. At the moment I am working on two new aurochs models made from polymer clay, since I sold my first ones to the Alpenzoo Innsbruck . I hope that my new models, again male and female and to same scale, will be more artistically refined and more anatomically correct.  The Auerrind Project has started a new breeding herd in Einhausen , Germany, containing two Hungarian Grey cows plus a young Sayaguesa bull named Johnny. One young H. Grey cow will follow next year, as much the two Maremmana cows.  It is likely that Johnny will become a very useful breeding bull, since he is from the herd of Peter van Geneijgen which has rather beautiful animals (see this post on the Auerrindprojekt's webpage for pictures), and the other Sayaguesa the Auerrind Project purchased from that herd look very good as we...