Characteristics
A typical Heck bull should be on average 1.4 m (4'5") high and a cow 1.3 m (4'3"), with weight up to 600 kg (1,300 lb). Heck cattle are twenty to thirty centimeters shorter than the aurochs they were bred to resemble. The Heck bulls are not much larger than the bull of most breeds of domestic cattle, while wild aurochs bulls are believed to have often exceeded 1000 kilograms (2,200 lb), half the size of a rhinoceros. In the german Zoo Duisburg, Watussi cattle was crossed in, which is a zebuine breed. Of modern Heck cattle, two herds still go back to this crossbred animal.
Size is not the only aspect in which Heck cattle differs from its wild ancestor. Heck cattle are bulky, like many other domestic breeds, while the aurochs, as a wild bovine, had an athletic body shape. The legs of Heck cattle are shorter and the trunk much longer than in the aurochs, in which shoulder height and trunk length nearly equalled each other. Heck cattle have a comparatively small and short head, while aurochsen had an elongate large head sitting on a muscular neck. Aurochsen had a well-developed shoulder musculature, carried by long spines, which is absent in Heck cattle. All in all, proportions and body shape of Heck cattle are not particularly similar to the aurochs and do not differ significantly from many other domestic breeds.
The horns of the aurochs were characteristic for the species, at the base they were swung outwards-upwards, then forwards-inwards and inwards-upwards at the tips. Aurochs horns were overall large and thick, reaching 80 centimetres in length and 10 centimetres in diameter. However, the horns of Heck cattle differ in many respects. Usually, they curve too much upwards or outwards, or do not reach the length or diameter of the aurochs. Often the horns of Heck cattle strongly resemble the breeds it was created from, for example, Hungarian gray cattle.
Only in coat colour Heck cattle may fit the aurochs, in having bulls with a black overall coat colour with a light eel stripe and sometimes having cows which have a brown colour. However, some Heck bulls may have a light saddle on the back, which was not present in the aurochs and the sexual dimorphism is often strongly reduced. Furthermore, blond straight front hairs are common in Heck cattle. It is not clear whether those hairs were of light colour in the aurochs since historical report do not mention a certain colour for that area; Cis van Vuure calls a blond colour of the front hairs a discolouration which appeared after domestication. Furthermore, in the aurochs those hairs likely were curly instead of straight.
Furthermore, Heck cattle demonstrate a high amount of heterogeneity, higher than in wild animals or most other domestic breeds. Besides the features that are wanted because they bear resemblance to the aurochs, strongly divergent features may pop out, e.g. a gray or beige coat colour, or a black-whitely spotted colour pattern.
All in all, Heck cattle differ in many respects from the aurochs and there are breeds, like Spanish fighting bulls, Sayaguesa Cattle, Pajuna Cattle, Maremmana primitivo, Maronesa and others, which bear in some aspects a greater resemblance to the wild animal, according to some scientists. Nevertheless they are capable of coping in the wild with cold temperatures or nutrient-poor food, thus they are commonly used for landscape conservation. On the other hand, there are other robust cattle breeds which at least can cope as well as Heck cattle in nature.
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