NEW BEEF TYPE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17229, 8 April 1930, Page 11

NEW BEEF TYPE

CANADIAN EXPERIMENTS

BISON AND HEREFORD HYBRIDS

Details of Canadian experiments in the improvement of cattle for beet production, by breeding bison and yak with domestic cattle, are contained in overseas papers. The aim was to develop a good beef breed in a rigorous climate with scanty pasture, and Aberdeen-Angus, Hereford and other European beef breeds were first crossed with the native Canadian bison or buffalo. The births of nia'le calves, however, • resulted in high (mortality both of cows and calves, while the surviving entries were sterile. But the female hybrids were a success, able to “rustle” (for themselves in bad weather and on poor pasture, fertile to bison or domestic bull, and producing a grade of beef something like that of the AberdeenAngus. The crossing of these hybrids among themselves produced a generation called a “cattalo,” with the useful qualities of the first crosses. To avoid the high mortality consequent on the original cross a further experiment has been recently tried of mating Central Asiatic yaks with bison and with European cattle, and subsequently mating the hybrids in various ways. Here there was no mortality; the animals flourished and .were “singurugged and hardy.” What their * commercial possibilities arc it .is yet too soon to say. There are animals about even now containing European, bison, and yak blood, and it is stated -that in the queer-looking animals produced'the dominance of the white face of the English Hereford is a noticeable feature. *