wafflycat said:
'Ere, Arch... what do you know about the origins of the wild cattle at Chillingham?
I know there's supposed to be a link to White Park cattle, but there's been mentioned occasionally links back to aurochs (they do have a slight auroch-y look to them)
I know some people like to think they link back to Aurochsen, (one aurochs, many aurochsen), and the Neolithic but it's disputed, and I think the clever money is on them having been enclosed back in the Middle Ages and isolated since, like the other specific white park cattle. The names of which I could have told you a couple of years ago. Cadzow was one.
I spent two days in the Natural History Museum measuring the bones of a selection of Chillingham cattle, with the intention of using them as a standard in my research. There was even talk of excavating some more carcasses, but it never came to anything. How quickly I've forgotton a lot about them.
Googling, I found this:
"The Chillingham cattle are said to be the only survivors of the wild herds which once roamed freely through the forests of Great Britain."
hmm, yeah, said to be by some, and said not to be by many. I'm on the sceptical side.
Anyway, the Aurochsen were huge (6 foot at the shoulder), reddish brown and had huge horns, 6 foot across in some cases. The Chillinghams have horns, I concede, but not big by those standards, and they aren't big (in fact they are small by modern cow standards), or brown.
There are a couple of 'secret' populations, in case of disease at Chillingam. Funnily, I've ridden past the park many times but never visited and seen on in the flesh.
In the 30's, a German called Heck set out to recreate the 'master race' of aurochsen (under the approving eye of Hitler), by breeding cattle with the right colouring and selecting for size. But they aren't Aurochsen, no matter how much they look like it, you can't recreate a genetic line backwards like that. Aurochsen are extinct, sadly - but they were only wiped out in the 17th C, in Eastern Europe. The Heck cattle live on still on reserve, although a fair number got eaten during the war.
At the department, there is a single (one side) aurochs horn core, which I used to show students to impress them - it took two hands to hold up and was a couple of feet long, and that's only the bony core, the whole horn would have been a foot longer at least. Next time you enjoy beef, or milk, or cheese, think of the Neolithic man who set out to domesticate that beast, armed only with a stone on a stick.
. I'm feeling a bit peckish 
and Mrs 26x25 has only one boiled egg for the whole family today 
