sutton026

S ome weeks ago, Claus Kropp published a photo of the young Sayaguesa bull Leo on facebook: Sayaguesa bull Leo © Claus Kropp Leo is from one of the best, if not the best, Sayaguesa herds that I have seen so far owned by Peter van Genejgen. Body shape, horn shape and skull shape are superb, the colour is good as well. The herd is slightly influenced by Alistana-Sanabresa, resulting in some reddish cows, giving the illusion of improved sexual dichromatism but bulls from the herd may happen to have a colour saddle (see here ). For the European aurochs, there is only evidence for solidly black bulls. Leo has a colour saddle too, however, it still is a very beautiful bull and I think among the best Sayaguesa bulls I have seen. See his elongated head on this photo by Claus Kropp. When judging the body shape, keep in mind that it is still a young bull, it continue to gain weight while its skeleton will finish growing at the age of six years. The beauty of the bull and the photo inspired me t...

C laus Kropp from the Auerrind project just published some new current photos of the first-generation Auerrind crosses at Kloster Lorsch, Germany, on facebook. It looks like they are becoming little bulls and cows now, not calves anymore, and start to take their final shape and colouration. All of them are copyright by Claus Kropp, so please do not replicate without permission.  Maremmana x Watussi  © Claus Kropp © Claus Kropp In the bull, it looks like Maremmana has absorbed almost all of the zebuine traits (at least those not present in Podolian cattle anyway, which are already influenced by zebus), only a slight hint of the zebuine hump seems to have remained. Watussi contributed dominant alleles for the expression of red pigment in the coat. So in the end, the bull might look like a red Maremmana bull with large horns, which would be a pretty interesting sight. A (Maremmana x Watussi) x Sayaguesa might be a combination worth considering, it might end up similar as Sayagues...

I already did a couple of posts on the Indian aurochs, Bos primigenius namadicus , the most comprehensive and up-to-date being this one . At the time of writing that post, the only picture of original material of this enigmatic subspecies I knew was a drawing of one skull. Thanks to a Carnivora Forum member I finally came across photo material of a few specimen. The two upper photos show bulls for certain, I am not sure about the last one. The skull material The crania show some very interesting morphological differences to the European subspecies, B. p. primigenius . First of all, the skulls are definitely narrower than European skulls (the upper one might still be within the variation range, though) and most zebus tend to have a very slender face as well. The horns of the known specimen are, as given in the literature, wide-ranging and considerably longer in proportion than the average for European skulls (which had, though, regional and chronological variation).   Considering ...