Saturday 5 October 2013

New photos from Tauros Project on the web

Tauros Project has two nearly adult bulls so far: "Manolo Uno", a Maremmana x Pajuna bull and "Rocky", a Maremmana x Limia bull. The new photos are of the latter one, I found them on flickR and want to share them here. 
The photos show him at the age of about 2,5 years: 

© Marcel Hubers on flickR
As you can see, there is still some grayish colour in the coat, while Manolo Uno, being half-Maremmana too, grew beautifully black. Rocky will continue to grow for about another 3 years, but the growing of the horns is nearly done at this age. The horns are medium-sized and do not curve as the aurochs' horns did. The skull seems large and longish, but maybe not quite as long as in the aurochs. I like the curly hair between the horns. The bull lacks a large hump and his rear seems to be higher than the shoulders on some photos. I haven't seen photos that tell enough about the proportions of the animal, but the leg length seems ok. Let's see how big he will get, Limia is a medium-sized breed while Maremmana is a quite large breed. 
But when looking at Rocky, we should not forget that this is an F1 result. It is not really relevant what the F1s exactly look like (or behave like etc.), because it is a heterozygoteous crossbreed that passes on its alleles per coincidence. What is relevant is the potential that lies within the founding breeds and their first crosses. 

Because both Manolo Uno and Rocky worked out well, Tauros Project produced a more cross individuals of these combinations. Here is a photo of a calf of an identity that is unknown to me, but might be of the same combination as one of the two bulls: 

© Marcel Huberts on flickR

No comments:

Post a Comment