 | |
| Conservation status | |
|---|---|
| Country of origin | Netherlands |
| Use | dual-purpose, dairy and beef |
| Traits | |
| Weight |
|
| Height | |
| Horn status | horned; rarely polled [2] |
| |
The Lakenvelder is a Dutch and German breed of dairy cattle. It is reported from the Netherlands and Belgium, but may be extinct in Germany. [2] [5] [6]
No written evidence supports an often-repeated claim that the Lakenvelder derives from cattle of the Gurtenvieh or belted Braunvieh of Switzerland, brought to the Netherlands in or after Mediaeval times by the nobility or the wealthy. [7] : 176 It is however supported by molecular genetic studies, which have shown that the Gurtenvieh, the Lakenvelder and the Belted Galloway all carry the same candidate gene for the belted phenotype. [4] : 224 [8] : 304 Cattle with this characteristic are shown in Dutch paintings from the seventeenth century. [8] : 304 It seems likely that the Lakenvelder derives directly from Swiss and Austrian belted cattle, and that during the reign of William of Orange some cattle of this type found their way to Scotland, where they inter-bred with Galloway stock, giving rise to the Belted Galloway. [8] : 304
A herd-book for the Lakenvelder was started in 1918; at that time there were about fifteen farms breeding the cattle, with some 200 head between them. [4] : 224 In 1930 regulations were introduced to control milk production and to make testing for tuberculosis obligatory; by the end of the Second World War only five herds remained. [9] : 285
The Lakenvelder is finely built and of small to medium size, with a withers height in the range 126–136 cm for cows and averaging 133 cm [4] : 225 or 137 cm for bulls. [3] : 97 Body weights are variously reported as 500 kg [4] : 225 or 700 kg for bulls, [3] : 97 and 450 kg [4] : 224 or 550 kg for cows. [3] : 97
The coat may be either black or dusky red, always with a broad belt of white encircling the body behind the shoulder and in front of the hip; black and red animals are in approximately equal numbers. [4] : 225 There are no other white markings on the head or body; [10] the horns, tongue and udder are pigmented. [11] Both sexes normally carry horns, but polled animals can occur. [2]
It is a dual-purpose breed, with both dairy and beef strains. Beef yields are not high, but the meat is of good quality and has achieved good results in comparative taste tests. [10] [11] The milk is high in protein and low in fat; milk yields are of the order of 5000–6000 kg per year. [3] : 97
The Longhorn or British Longhorn is a British breed of beef cattle characterised by long curving horns. It originated in northern England, in the counties of Lancashire, Westmorland and Yorkshire, and later spread to the English Midlands and to Ireland. It was originally a slow heavy draught animal; cows gave a little milk, although high in fat. In the eighteenth century Robert Bakewell applied his methods of selective breeding to these cattle, which for a short time became the predominant British breed. Both the numbers and the quality of the breed declined throughout the nineteenth century and for much of the twentieth. A breed society was formed in 1878, and a herd-book published in that year.
The Galloway is a Scottish breed of beef cattle, named after the Galloway region of Scotland, where it originated during the seventeenth century.
The Dairy Shorthorn is a British breed of dairy cattle. It derives from the Shorthorn cattle of Teesside, in the North Riding of Yorkshire and in Northumbria in north-eastern England. The Shorthorn was for this reason at first known as the Durham or Teeswater.
The Belted Galloway is a traditional Scottish breed of beef cattle. It derives from the Galloway stock of the Galloway region of south-western Scotland, and was established as a separate breed in 1921. It is adapted to living on the poor upland pastures and windswept moorlands of the region. The exact origin of the breed is unclear, although the white belt for which they are named, and which distinguishes the breed from black Galloway cattle, is often surmised to be the result of cross-breeding with the similarly-coloured Dutch Lakenvelder.
The South Devon is a British breed of large beef cattle. It originated in the counties of Devon and Cornwall in south-west England, and is mentioned from the eighteenth century. It was a dual-purpose breed, kept both for its milk and for beef. Since 1972 selection has been for beef only.
The Buelingo is a modern American composite breed of belted beef cattle, created in North Dakota, in the United States. It is named for Russ Bueling, who owned the foundation stock in the early 1970s.
The Red Sindhi is a dairy breed of zebuine cattle. It is believed to originate in western Sindh and in the Las Bela area of Balochistan, now in Pakistan. It is widely kept in Pakistan, where in 2006 there were approximately 3000000 head; there are small numbers in India and in Bangladesh. Other names include Las Bela, Malir and Sindhi.
The Aubrac or Laguiole is a French breed of beef cattle. It originates on the Plateau de l'Aubrac in the Massif Central in central southern France, from which it also takes its name. It has a wheat-coloured coat and dark hooves, switch, muzzle and eyes.
The Pinzgauer is a breed of domestic cattle from the Pinzgau region of the federal state of Salzburg in Austria. It has distinctive colouring, with chestnut-brown sides and white back and underside. It was in the past a triple-purpose breed, raised for meat, milk and draught use. There is a naturally polled sub-type, the Jochberg Hummel. In 2007 the breed was not considered by the FAO to be at risk.
The Buša or Busha is a breed or group of breeds of small short-horned cattle distributed in south-eastern Europe, principally in Albania and the countries of the former Yugoslavia – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. Related breeds include the Gurgucke, Lekbibaj and Prespa of Albania, the Gacko of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Greek Shorthorn, the Metohija Red of Kosovo and the Rhodope Shorthorn of Bulgaria.
The Armoricaine or Armorican is an endangered French breed of domestic cattle. It originated in Brittany in the nineteenth century. It has a red coat with white markings, and has short horns.
The Pie Rouge des Plaines is a modern French breed of dairy cattle. It was created in about 1970 by cross-breeding the traditional Armorican cattle of Brittany, in north-western France, with red-pied cattle of the Dutch Meuse-Rhine-Yssel and German Deutsche Rotbunte breeds.
The Lincoln Red is a British breed of red-coated beef cattle. It originates in, and is named for, the county of Lincolnshire in the eastern Midlands of England. It was selectively bred in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by crossing large local draught cattle of the region with Teeswater Shorthorns of medium size. It was at first known as the Lincolnshire Red Shorthorn, and was a dual-purpose breed, reared both for milk and for beef. The polling gene was introduced in the early twentieth century, and the cattle are now usually polled; the word 'shorthorn' was dropped from the breed name in 1960. In the twenty-first century it is reared for beef.
The Lucerna is a Colombian breed of dual-purpose cattle. It is a composite breed, created in the twentieth century by cross-breeding local Criollo cattle of the Hartón breed with imported dairy cattle of European type. This was the earliest composite breed to be developed in South America.
The Finnish Ayrshire is a Finnish breed of dairy cattle. It derives from Scottish Ayrshire stock imported to Finland between about 1847 and 1923. It is the most numerous dairy breed of the country, constituting approximately 61% of the dairy herd.
The Punganur is an Indian breed of small zebuine cattle. It is found in the hill country of Chitoor District, in Andhra Pradesh in southern India, and is among the smallest of all zebu breeds.
The Bretonne Pie Noir is breed of small dairy cattle from Brittany in north-western France. It originates from Cornouaille and the Pays de Vannes in the départements of Finistère and Morbihan. Due to its small size, modest requirements, good productivity and ability to exploit poor and marginal terrain, it was well suited to traditional Breton agriculture. A herdbook was established in 1886. The breed was in the past numerous; at the beginning of the twentieth century there were about 500,000. Numbers fell drastically during that century, and in 1976, when about 15,000 remained, a breed conservation plan was begun, the first such for any breed of cattle.
The Lohani is a Pakistani breed of zebuine cattle. It is named after the Loralai District of Balochistan, and is also found in the Dera Ismail Khan District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is principally a draught breed, but may also used for milking.
The Bleue du Nord is a French breed of dual-purpose cattle from the former region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais in the north-east of the country, on the border with Belgium. It shares the origins of the Belgian Blue, but unlike that breed is selectively bred both for meat and for dairy use. The double-muscling characteristic of the Belgian Blue, caused by a genetic myostatin deficiency, is present also in the Bleue du Nord, but to a limited and controlled extent.
The Dutch Belted or Dutch Belt is an American breed of dairy cattle. It derives from the Lakenvelder of Germany and the Netherlands, of which examples were imported to the United States from 1838. It became an important dairy breed in the early twentieth century, but could not compete with the Holstein-Friesian. By 1970 it was close to extinction; from 1993 the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy was active in the recovery of the breed. In 2021 it was listed as "critical" on the watchlist of the conservancy.
