Kerry cattle

A Kerry cow and calf in Killarney National Park

Kerry cattle (Irish: Bó Chiarraí or Buinín) are a rare breed of dairy cattle, native to Ireland. They are believed to be one of the oldest breeds in Europe.[1] Their coat is almost entirely black, with a little white on the udder. The horns are whitish with dark tips. Cows weigh about 350–400 kg and produce 3000–3700 kg of milk per lactation.[2]

The breed is probably descended from the Celtic Shorthorn, brought to Ireland as early as 2000 BC. They were developed as a milking breed suited to small subsistence farms of southern and western Ireland. They cause less damage to soils in high rainfall areas than larger breeds. By 1983 there were only around 200 pedigree Kerry cattle in the world,[3] but numbers have since increased. A herd is maintained in the Irish state owned estate of Farmleigh.

Murphys Ice Cream uses milk from the breed.[4]

Kerry cattle were imported to the United States in 1818 and prospered in the nineteenth century, but had become scarce by the 1930s. Today there are only a few herds in North America, mostly more recent imports in Canada.

Breeding back the aurochs

The aurochs is an extinct type of large wild cattle that inhabited Europe, Asia and North Africa. It is the ancestor of domestic cattle. The species survived in Europe until the last recorded aurochs died in the Jaktorów Forest, Poland in 1627. Approaches that aim to breed back an aurochs-like phenotype do not equate to an aurochs-like genotype. In 2015, researchers mapped the draft genome of a British aurochs dated to 6,750 years before present. Researchers compared the genome to the genomes of 73 modern cattle populations and found in traditional or landrace cattle breeds of Scottish, Irish, Welsh and English origin - such as Highland, Dexter, Kerry, Welsh Black and White Park - carry the ancestry of the sequenced aurochs but the other populations did not.[5][6] Another study concluded that because of this genomic introgression of the aurochs into these breeds, if this reflects "the bigger picture across the aurochs/cattle range, perhaps several sup-populations of aurochs are not extinct at all." The study proposed that it will be possible to consider breeding back Bos "that are genetically akin to specific original aurochs populations, through selective cross-breeding of local cattle breeds bearing local aurochs-genome ancestry."[6]

References

  1. ↑ History of The Kerry Cow
  2. ↑ The Kerry Cattle Society
  3. ↑ Oklahoma State University breed profile
  4. ↑ Murphys Ice Cream Official Website
  5. ↑ Park, Stephen D E; Magee, David A.; McGettigan, Paul A.; Teasdale, Matthew D.; Edwards, Ceiridwen J.; Lohan, Amanda J.; Murphy, Alison; Braud, Martin; Donoghue, Mark T.; Liu, Yuan; Chamberlain, Andrew T.; Rue-Albrecht, Kévin; Schroeder, Steven; Spillane, Charles; Tai, Shuaishuai; Bradley, Daniel G.; Sonstegard, Tad S.; Loftus, Brendan J.; Machugh, David E. (2015). "Genome sequencing of the extinct Eurasian wild aurochs, Bos primigenius, illuminates the phylogeography and evolution of cattle". Genome Biology. 16. doi:10.1186/s13059-015-0790-2.
  6. 1 2 Sinding, Mikkel-Holger S.; Gilbert, M. Thomas P. (2016). "The Draft Genome of Extinct European Aurochs and its Implications for De-Extinction". Open Quaternary. 2. doi:10.5334/oq.25.

See also


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