The Heck bull at Lembruch, Germany
I have several posts in preparation at the moment, but for today, I have a short post. It is about a Heck bull I found recently on the web, and I think he is interesting for a number of reasons. It is or was (the article is from 2014, so I do not know if it is up to date) the breeding bull of a herd at Lembruch, Germany, owned by the breeder Martin Kockmeyer. At first I want to present some photos of the bull (photos owned by the Presse-Bild-Agentur Nokem Martin Kemper, I got them from this article):
First of all, the upper two photos show nicely how Heck cattle is a mosaic of its founding breeds: the body and skull shape of a Highland bull (not desirable from an "aurochs point of view"), the colour of a Werdenfelser or Corsican bull, the horns very reminiscent of Watussi.
Secondly, the bull's name is "Arak", thus I suspect he might be from the Wörth lineage, which is/was remarkable for being the only closed breeding line within Heck cattle and having established large, thick, comparably well-curved horns. The bull also resembles those of the lineage, like "Albatross" or "Aretto" quite well. It is always good to see bulls from that lineage being breeding bulls on other herd, as it means that they are spreading the genetic make-up for good horns among the population. As it is apparent from the photos, the bull is seemingly not very large, which is unfortunately true of many un-crossed Heck bulls.
On the VFA's sale site, there is currently a bull for sale from the same herd, named "Delika", born in 2014. The horns are of a very useful dimension and curvature, it might be a son of Arak:
First of all, the upper two photos show nicely how Heck cattle is a mosaic of its founding breeds: the body and skull shape of a Highland bull (not desirable from an "aurochs point of view"), the colour of a Werdenfelser or Corsican bull, the horns very reminiscent of Watussi.
Secondly, the bull's name is "Arak", thus I suspect he might be from the Wörth lineage, which is/was remarkable for being the only closed breeding line within Heck cattle and having established large, thick, comparably well-curved horns. The bull also resembles those of the lineage, like "Albatross" or "Aretto" quite well. It is always good to see bulls from that lineage being breeding bulls on other herd, as it means that they are spreading the genetic make-up for good horns among the population. As it is apparent from the photos, the bull is seemingly not very large, which is unfortunately true of many un-crossed Heck bulls.
On the VFA's sale site, there is currently a bull for sale from the same herd, named "Delika", born in 2014. The horns are of a very useful dimension and curvature, it might be a son of Arak:
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