Heck Cattle - Development

Development

Heck cattle originated in the 1920s and 1930s in an attempt to breed back domestic cattle to their ancestral form: the aurochs (Bos primigenius primigenius). Extensive breeding programs to bring back the aurochs were conducted by the German brothers Lutz and Heinz Heck. Heinz worked at the Hellabrunn Zoological Gardens in Munich and Lutz was director of the Berlin Zoological Gardens. Their project was supported by Reichsforstmeister and Reichsjägermeister Hermann Göring, who kept Heck cattle in his chase at Rominten near the Russian-Polish border. A reconstruction of the ancestral aurochs also fitted into the Nazi propaganda drive to symbolize the originality and purity of the Aryan nation. Heinz Heck in Munich crossed Hungarian Grey Cattle, Scottish Highland, Murnau-Werdenfels, Angeln, German Friesian, Podolic cattle and Corsican breeds. In Berlin, his brother, Lutz Heck crossed Spanish and French fighting cattle with other breeds. The resulting animals are often claimed to have been very similar, proving the "success" of the project, which was not verified in scientific literature. The Berlin breed was lost in the aftermath of World War II. Consequently, modern Heck cattle are descendants from the Hellabrunn breed in Munich. In some locations, primitive aurochs-like breeds have been crossed into Heck cattle trying to come closer to the aurochs in phenotypical characters. This cross-breed is called Taurus cattle, which is not to be confused with TaurOs Project (see below). However, the predominant majority of Heck cattle goes back to the attempts of Heinz Heck during the 1920s and 1930s.

Read more about this topic:  Heck Cattle

Famous quotes containing the word development:

    On fields all drenched with blood he made his record in war, abstained from lawless violence when left on the plantation, and received his freedom in peace with moderation. But he holds in this Republic the position of an alien race among a people impatient of a rival. And in the eyes of some it seems that no valor redeems him, no social advancement nor individual development wipes off the ban which clings to him.
    Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)

    The work of adult life is not easy. As in childhood, each step presents not only new tasks of development but requires a letting go of the techniques that worked before. With each passage some magic must be given up, some cherished illusion of safety and comfortably familiar sense of self must be cast off, to allow for the greater expansion of our distinctiveness.
    Gail Sheehy (20th century)

    The Cairo conference ... is about a complicated web of education and employment, consumption and poverty, development and health care. It is also about whether governments will follow where women have so clearly led them, toward safe, simple and reliable choices in family planning. While Cairo crackles with conflict, in the homes of the world the orthodoxies have been duly heard, and roundly ignored.
    Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)