sutton026

I love brainstorming about new crossbreeding herds that have not been tried by any of the existing projects before, thinking about balancing the pro’s and con’s of the breeds involved and how fast you might get success. There is one crossbreeding idea that is in my mind for a few years now, and with this post I want to outline why I think that this combination would be fast and effective. I hope that someone who has more practical possibilities than I have reads it and might be inspired. I propose a cross herd of Maronesa x Chianina. It becomes obvious why when comparing the pro’s and con’s for both breeds – I go over it step by step. Maronesa Maronesa is a breed from the Portuguese uplands and therefore used to precipitation and cold temperature, as you can see in their well-developed winter coat and hairy udders. It is, as all primitive landraces are, variable regarding the degree of primitiveness. There are herds that have a more derived, more domestic body, face and horns, but sinc...

B ack in 2015, I had a slightly emotional rant about something that keeps on entertaining especially the English-speaking world: the “nazi cow nonsense”. Such an absurd headline is the result of people not caring about historical facts and just wanting to be entertained by or to entertain with something that sounds as absurd as a “nazi super cow”. A discreet tip: if you are about to write a headline that ludicrous, you might take one moment and scrutinize. Anyway, in my 2015 article I covered the true motivation behind the Heck brothers’ attempts and the connection with single officials of the Nazi regime. Some weeks ago, I was addressed to a blog article written one month after my 2015 article that contains a lot of claims and mistakes that slightly upset me. I found no commentary function so I use my own blog for writing a clarification. The article has a nonsensical title, on the blog homidlikeme. I go over the mistakes and wrong claims step by step. Why is it important to dismant...

L ast week I did some new anatomical sketches based on a number of bull skeletons – the Sassenberg bull, Braunschweig bull, Vig bull and Kopenhagen bull. As usual, I chose photos of the skeletons available on the internet or books, corrected certain aspects if necessary (f.e. the placement of the shoulder blade or flexion of the hind legs is often wrong in mounted skeletons), tracked the skeletons out and reconstructed the life appearance of the animals with a ballpoint pen. I would have done the same with other skeletons as well, so that I don’t always do the same individuals, but for many of the other skeletons I was not able to find photos that allowed to correct the mistakes in the mounts and therefore a life reconstruction would not be fruitful. There is also quite a lack of mounted aurochs cow skeletons in museums, otherwise I would have done a series for cows as well. The photos of the skeletons for the Braunschweig and Sassenberg bull were scanned from Walter Frisch’s book Der ...

W ith this post, I want to give a portrait for two interesting Taurus bulls which both were born in the Lippeaue and purchased by Olaf Nowacki. Olaf Nowacki was a Taurus cattle breeder from Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany who had a passion for the aurochs. At first, he started with Heck cattle, but decided that he wanted to have larger animals, so he purchased two young Taurus bulls from the ABU in 2008, one named Lupio and the other one later to be called Arnulf. My attention to these bulls was drawn when I discovered a photo of Arnulf on a Facebook page claiming it was a Heck x Chianina bull reaching 170cm at the shoulders. I had an email correspondence with Mr. Nowacki’s daughter Judith Fiedler, who kindly provided me with lots of information and photos and then I decided to do portraits about those interesting bulls. Many thanks! At first I was sceptical of a size of 170cm for both bulls, but I was told that Mr. Nowacki measured both bulls with a yard stick and since we foun...

T oday I finished my last exam for this semester, what means that for me, summer has begun. This also means that the months of lethargy on this blog are over; I am going to fabricate a number of blogposts and artworks as soon as a I can. So for today, this is what you can expect to come during the next weeks: A post on the genetic background of morphological traits and its implications for breeding Some posts (or one big post) on the big question “Ancient Europe: one big forest or savannah?” Portraits of two interesting bulls Some more artworks and reconstructions on paper The finishing of my new aurochs models (WIP photos about to come)   I am going to start doing another aurochs horn model scale 1:1. Perhaps, but I am not sure yet if I will find the time and money, also a complete aurochs bull head 1:1 in trophy style. Of course these ideas do cost me some time and effort, especially the upper two require a lot of literature and web research I was not capable of during the semest...