When I attended the Land Institute's "Prairie Festival" a month ago in Salina, Kansas, the large, tame cattle in the pasture near the barn where the talks were given were quite a hit with the nearly 1,000 festival attendants.
My grandfather raised purebred Hereford bulls on the Nebraska farm which I grew up on, so I may have some cattle awareness in my genes, but I couldn't figure out what these cattle were.
I enjoy seeing different livestock breeds, and previously, my post, "Miniature Cattle, Piedmontese Cattle, and White Park Cattle" was very popular. In a this-is-a-small-world kind of way, Kent Whealy, who spoke at the festival, was actually responsible for my interest in White Park Cattle, since I was introduced to the breed in Iowa at Seed Savers Exchange and was fascinated by their history.
At the Prairie Festival, no one that I asked could answer my question as to what kind of cattle these were. So, I contacted the Land Institute for the purpose of making this post, to solve the mystery.
This was their answer:
"Our cows were developed here – they are Longhorn with back crosses to Angus and Hereford . The calf born in spring of ’09 is the first one to revert back to the solid black. It’s mother and two sisters in the pasture are the unusual black and white ones."
Thanks! Mystery solved.
--Kalpa
For my previous posts related to this year's Prairie Festival see these links:
- News From the 2010 Annual Land Institute's "Prairie Festival"
- Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry and Serendipity
- Kent Whealy's Speech [Part I] at the Land Institute September 26, 2010: The Documenting of Heritage Apples
- Kent Whealy's Speech [Part II] at the Land Institute September 26, 2010: The Story of How Seed Savers Exchange Seeds Ended up at Svalbard
- Quotes by Wes Jackson from the 2010 Prairie Festival at the Land Institute