CATTLE THAT GRUNT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 January 1942, Page 4

CATTLE THAT GRUNT

NEW BREED OF ANIMAL FOR CANADA. MANY YEARS EXPERIMENTS. OTTAWA. Cattle that grunt instead of bellow and paw through heavy snow for food may be future inhabitants of vast areas in Northern Canada. For twenty years experiments in development of the cattalo —a cross between buffalo and domestic cattle —have been proceeding. Canadian Department of Agriculture officials stated recently that it is expected that by 1943 animals threequarters domestic cattle and onequarter buffalo, will be bred successfully. Dr Alan Deakin, of the animal husbandry division of the Department of Agriculture, said this cross will result in a breed which will turn areas where existing cattle could not thrive into ranching country. “Cattalo are not being developed with the idea of competition with domestic breeds,” Dr Deakin added. The cattalo strain for which scientists strive will have the beef qualities of domestic cattle and the hardihood and invaluable instincts of self-pre-servation of the buffalo. “In a storm, the buffalo’s instinct causes him to face the snow while domestic cattle drift before it,” Dr Deakin said. “The history of the prairies includes many ranching tragedies in which domestic cattle drifted before a blizzard and piled up in coulees or against fences, to die. The buffalo paws through the snow to get to the vegetation beneath. He eats shrubs and anything else he can find, and his heavy coat protects him against the cold.” The long effort to find a reproducing cattalo strain has been marked by many disappointments. Today, however, there are 126 cattalo, hybrids and later strains alive in Buffalo National Park at Wainwright, Alberta, where the experiments have been conducted. The various crosses so far made have shown that buffalo characteristics are maintained. A loud grunt instead of bellow is the cattalo’s expression of anger or protest. The buffalo stores up fat in good feeding seasons as a reserve against lean winter periods, and the cattalo does the same. From domestic cattle, however, the cattalo i has taken his ability to withstand disease.