Thursday 10 July 2014

Heck, or Taurus?

Taurus cattle become increasingly widespread among Heck cattle thanks to their increased resemblance to the aurochs. Recently, some Taurus cattle (or Taurus-influenced Hecks) were even imported in the Netherlands. The inclusion of Taurus individuals into un-crossed Heck herds of course increases the primitive looks of Heck cattle as a whole, so it should be seen as a positive trend. Therefore I don't think that Taurus cattle and Heck cattle should be regarded as separate breeds (apart from that, Taurus cattle is no "finished" breed yet but still in a crossbreeding phase). I see Taurus cattle as an advanced form of Heck cattle. In this post I am going to present some photos of Taurus-influenced "usual" Heck cattle - I define them as Heck cattle that are not part of conscious crossbreeding or tagged as Taurus, and that have a large portion of un-crossed Hecks in their genealogy. If the trend of mixing Taurus and non-Taurus Hecks keeps up, it will probably get hard to distinguish between both in the future, which is, again, positive. I hope that one day all Heck cattle will be influenced by the breeds used for Taurus cattle, perhaps except some herds in zoos for nostalgic reasons. 

1 comment:

  1. The bull on the last picture, and the one to the left on the eighth picture from down and up are beautiful specimens.

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