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now, i don’t know, maybe it’ll be boring to you, maybe not, i thought about posting a thread about indigenous cattle breeds of croatia. i live in a small country, but we have four indigenous cattle breeds.
well, here they are!busa
(BOO-sha)
this is the smallest and oldest breed of cattle in croatia, indigenous in various types, to the whole Balkan region. note the white muzzle ring. cows are 120 cm high, and weight about 200 kg, or 500 pounds, reddish in colour. bulls and oxen may reach 600 pounds.
busa was traditionally raised in mountanous and infertile areas of balkan mountains, and served as a milk, meat and draft animal.
it can withstand intense heat and scorched pastures during sommer months. once on pasture it had to walk several hours on stony landscape to the water hole. it is very surefooted.
in the winter it was held on diet of weedy hay and corn straw. it was a poor mountain region, where the people were ofter starving too, so the animals were given to eat straw from the roofs at the end of the winter when the meager supplies of hay ran out.
overall, due to the vigorous natural selection, these little animals are very healthy, fertile and long-lived.
its milk preformance is poor, but some specimens did very well under improved living conditions.
today a single herd of purebred animals in croatia remains in a state paddock. crossbred animals are still held sporadically.boskarin
bo-skha-rin
this cattle breed is indigenous to the instria peninsula, where it has been used exclusivelly as a draft animal. milk yield is low. cows weight about 600 kg 1800 pounds, bulls 2000 pounds and oxen 2300 pounds. the relationship of an istrian peasant to his ox is one full of love and respect. its dwelling was called “dvor” or manor, not a stall, a place for lowly livestock as goats and sheep. although it looks lot like odolian cattle, the genetic tests have concluded that the boskrin is not closelly related to any cattle breed in europe.slavonian sriem podolian cattle
as its name tells, it is an umbrella name for a type of longhorn cattle who came from podolia region, today ukraine, to the south, probably in 5.th century, with slavonia lowland region of croatia, beneath hungary, being its southwest breeding periphery.
the cattle were kept in the open plains all year round, with abundant pasture only in spring, and the pastures transformed in scorched grass in summer. cattle were kept on harvested fields in fall, and had to dig up the grass under the thick snow in the winter. this all shaped a very resistant and long-lived breed. cows weight the 1800 pounds, bulls over 2000 pounds, and oxen 2400 pounds. please note that these cattle were raised in extensive conditions.in 17th and 18th century raising podolian cattle for meat was a very profitable bussiness. they were driven in huge herds across the plains to central europe,and were prized for their ability to travel for weeks on scorched grass and still arrive in germany or venice without any significant loss of weight, and for their game-flavoured meat.
they were historically used for heavy draft, a task for which thay are, by their stamina, survivability on meagre forage, longetivity, their strong hooves, long legs, and strenght, good equiped. the working ox, with his weight over one ton on a diet of scorched grass, with long horns, was probably the most imposing animal on the plains. hitched in teams of six they were used to pull heavy mearchant wagons across the plains.
until the arrival of mechanization, the podolian ox was the principal power source to cultivate the plains and drag out the oak trunks out of ancient slavonian forests. it was also used by the army.
this picture was taken in ww1. oxen were being used by the
austro-hungarian army to pull supply wagons because of their incredible stamina, and because they could survive on hay and negotiate muddy roads better than horses.milk yield is low, but it is said that for the amount of milk, no cow gives as rich milk. cows often object being milked, as they were mostly not milked in the past.
in croatia a herd is kept in the posavina aluvial plain where they keep the pastures clean of brushes.
the podolian cattle would be my first choice if i could keep oxen.anyway i hope you enjoyed! don’t worry, this was it, i don’t have a similar mega-thread!
thank you for your intrest elke!
so, boskarin…well, enthusiasts of the breed like to call it the biggest mammal of europe, but they are forgeting chianina cattle though:D
well, the horns of boskarin are also selected to be shaped back, so they don’t get cought up in wines when plowing the wineyards. the breed was formerly, before mechanization came, also spread to slovenia, a neighbouring country. the breed conservation program was started in the ninties, and through a group of dedicated breeders specimens looking like purebred bulls and cows were selected and a breeding program was started. how could they tell? well, true, purebred boskarins have bule upper mouth and a dark strip on their back.
in the 19th century the government tried to improve the breed by adding romagnola blood to the breed, but the attempt was short lived because cross-bred animals couldn’t match the purebreds in working preformance and resiliance. but the question arises why was the boskarin used only as draft animal, and not as a milk animal? well, the animal on the coat of arms orf istria is an istrian goat, now extinct, but it proves that goats and sheep provided the milk. this means the cattle were bred exclusivelly for their draft preformance, in the past more important than milk and meat preformance combined, and that they excelled in it.
so, it is one of the rare cattle breeds in europe selected primarly for work. this makes them spirited at work, but obedient and afectionate. only a rope around the horns is used to control the animals. they are also long lived, and live up to 20 years.
they are browsers.
although it’s not usual to milk the cows, under good feeding conditions they can giva 6-8 liters of milk with up to 6%butterfat. by comparison, holstein gives 2%. cows can give up to 1200 liters of milk in a lactation, which is a lot when you see that no selection work was done for milk.on podolians
they can work up to 16 years of age, not because they are weak, but because their teeth are worn out.i love podolians!
[IMG]http://www.flickr.com/photos/blese/204185696/sizes/l/[/IMG]@Howie 4231 wrote:
bivol
I found it very interesting that I have two yokes just like the ones on the cattle in that WWI picture. I wonderd where the originated.
well, this yoking system has been subject of my attention, but i found out little. i’ve seen a development phases in hungary in their ethno collection. it seemes this yoke was either developed in the panonian plain (today hungary and ukraine and poland) and spread to south and east. nowdays it’s used in hungary, serbia, continental croatia, bulgaria, romania, parts of turkey, and even to pakistan. beats me how it got there, maybe it’s an indigenous design. if i were able to speak hungarian, maybe i could solve this…
my best guess is panonian plain, and not pakistan, becaise if you look good you’ll see that there is no grab ring in the middle of the yoke, there’s an iron piece that goes through the yoke. the tongue is held by a second iton piece. this is a totally diferent system, as the yoke is under fixed angle, but n the collection it shows that the yoke was developed with itanother curiosity… my cousin, who has more knowledge of ethnology, told me that hungarians use slavic words for agricultural tools. this means they were not agricultural peoples when they settled in today hungary, they learned agriculture from the slavic peoples they subjuged. and slavs lived in the entire region of middle and eastern europe. so you can say that that yoke is in fact a slavic yoke.
i’ve seen this yoke in usa, probably brought by farmers from eastern or middle europe.
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