My neighbor i have my permaculture project with is a farmer, he was landracing long before i was, but with cows. The race they have here is Charolais, big white meat cows. They’ve bred them more and more big. The calves have become so enormous they often need a veterinarian to be born through caesaraen. The mothercows have lost their motherinstinct and farmers had to run after calves, feed them and-so-on.
They need a lot of land as well and they’re pretty weak.
So my farmer friend decided it was time to cross breed them. Years ago he brought in a Limousin bull which created brownish offspring. After that he brought in a Gascon taureau, which made some black calves appear and others grey.
Now it’s some kind of mix. But he’s hoping to retire, so if somebody wants them in their collection, say so.
That is so wrong in terms of permaculture ethics … I think the most beneficial action that could have been done to improve the situaltion is to revisit a permaculture design method called Analysis of Element related to these poor animals.
There is a cattle breed I was very interested in years ago called Beefalo. They stabilized a 3/8 bison percentage by pedigree. https://americanbeefaloassociation.com/ the bison percentage got bred out too much so they eventually went more to genetic markers. However one interesting part of this was that any breed of domestic cattle could be the domestic portion. Which allows for a lot of variability!
@Hugo your neighbor might be participating in the creation of Auroch 2.0 !
link to an interesting project of crossing primitive cow breeds to revive an extinct species from prehistoric Auroch.
The cows painted in the caves by our ancestors have not completely disappeared, since fragments of their DNA remain dormant in old breeds of cows… it is then advisable to hybridise them and recommence the selection in the offspring.
Super interesting project… which proves once again that introgression is a godsend in life!
Hahaha. 90% of time they’re out. If not more. But for the photos this was better. My phone doesn’t do well in the field. I don’t know what the rules are to be called a land race, last i heard it was a mix of 4 differing varieties.
@stephane_rave nice project. Surprised no body in France is involved
I’ve never thought of “landrace" as a race in the sense of Caucasian, African, Asian etc. I’ve always thought of it like a race to see who excels on any given piece of land
I think the most beneficial action that could have been done to improve the situaltion is to revisit a permaculture design method called Analysis of Element related to these poor animals.
