#we actually used to have the gray cows- same breed as the first pictures^_^

[farmboyprince]

Also being a person who loves cows, another problem with these super productive breeds is that in order for milk to be produced at such a high rate, their whole metabolism has to be faster- including heartrate. That means the cows are at a high alert constantly. No wonder the bulls tend to be aggressive and cows skittish:/ some can be so scared that they can only be milked by a machine!! You can't milk a cow when it's scared since it wouldn't let the milk out (which is also bad for the cow), and them being scared+having to be milked multiple times during the day is almost impossible for a human to do as any unexpected movement can spook them. Yaay! /sarcastic

To end on a nicer note, these are two of our local breeds that are very nice and very calm, even if they produce less:)

Sivka is a brown cattle mix of swiss and our native cows. She's a combined breed, which means she's used for both milk and meat. In the last couple decades a lot of her was mixed with more productive breeds, but there's a movement to get them back to their roots.

Another brown cow, cika, is 100% ours- a cow that's been rescued from the brink of extinction. About 50 years ago the breed was critically endangered, but the farmers got together and saved it. Now, she's a protected breed, and farmers get additional grants to keep them to offset the smaller production.

Both of these are friendly, steady, have good fertility and are adapted to colder temperatures, stony soil and sparse grass. They can live outside during the whole year, though they do need some shade in the summer and most people take them inside for the winter. They're also both on my "animals I want" list- when I'll have cows, they'll be one of these breeds:)

Is there beef with the Holstein cows and you or what was that joke lol

It's kind of wild It's just never come up on this blog before, but I HATE holsteins. Bottom 10 cow breeds for me. I hate how they're so common they account for the majority of milk produced. I hate that they're the "default" cow to the point where some don't even know cattle HAVE other colors. I hate their tiny horns (IF THEY EVEN HAVE THAT. LOSER ASS HORNLESS COW) and their painfully massive udders.

Legit I'm trying so hard to not launch into a No Mouth Must Scream style AM speech-- shoot my hand slipped.

(AM speech about why i dont like holsteins below the cut)

For starters, I have to give a brief lesson on what these terms mean; the "Holstein" is the American strain of the "Frisian" breed. Frisians are an ancient breed from Frisia, in the north of what we now consider the Netherlands. Crosses between the breeds are "Holstein-Frisians."

(There’s even more to this but im keeping it as simple as possible. Also one of my friends is Frisian and she is probably going to kill me for describing it like that.)

Historically, livestock was adapted to the environment they lived in. Frisians were bred by the Frisii people for hundreds of years in extremely grass-rich, lush, flat environments. The "polders" of the northern parts of the Netherlands. They're huge and eat a LOT of food.

Traditional Frisians were developed to produce as much meat and milk from a single individual as possible, without compromising the health of the cattle with constant inbreeding to get quick gains. We are talking about a breed that is over 2000 years old. They had the perfect environment to make The Ultimate Food Cow and by god they did it. I can respect that.

So, take that, drag it across an ocean to a place that does NOT have polders, and add the rapid enshittification of capitalism to it. BAM you've got a fucking holstein.

There is ONE goal for "improving" the holstein. Make More Milk. As long as the black and white milkbag leaks enough, nothing else matters. Health? Fertility? Feed ratio? Ability to not die of infection? WHO CARES. MILK LINE GO UP.

Over 90% of holsteins are inbred to start with, because Milk Line Go Up. To the tune of having an average COI of 8%-- where extreme negative effects (think Hapsburgs) start to crop up around 10%

Holstein bulls are aggressive bastards (many dairy bulls are), so no one wants to keep intact males in their herds, meaning most cows are artificially inseminated

Not being limited by the natural lifespan of a living bull means that the same stud can keep having direct offspring for decades after his death

Toystory the bull had 500,000 calves before he died, and hit over 1 million offspring in 2015. That's ONE animal and to put this in perspective, there are 9 million holsteins in the US.

DON'T WORRY IT GETS WORSE

Not only can 99% of holsteins be traced back to just two bulls-- 99% of male holsteins share one of two exact Y chromosomes with those two bulls.

The gene pool is so small that it's equivalent to about 60 individuals. Warrior Cat allegiances are larger than that. That's barely bigger than modern ThunderClan.

"Massive lack of genetic diversity" does not begin to capture the existential dread of this situation. Mark my words, WATCH, when the Bird Flu finally mutates a strain that rips through a mammalian population, it's gonna be in the USA and it's going to be through our dairy cattle.

This is not prophecy or me laying a curse on the land, this is the natural consequence of basing the stability of US milk production on the equivalent of 9 million clones of two classrooms worth of individuals, and then packing them in close quarters

And we don't have to wait for doomsday for the impacts to be apparent on the cattle themelves

Holstein fertility has also dropped by half since the 1960s when the intensive inbreeding really kicked into high gear

Because their whole body is dedicating all of their resources to milk production, they have a notoriously "bony" frame.

Show judges, however, like this because they think that's a very "feminine" look for a 1600 pound ruminant. Very normal thing to think.

Like. I don't know if i can communicate this to people who don't look at cows a lot (it's not quite as obviously dramatic as a pug skull) but here is a comparison of an "ideal" show holstein and an "unselected" holstein from a herd that's been established as a sort of "control group" for what they looked like back in the 1960s;

The way that the artery on the "modern" cow's belly runs to the udder like a big pink worm freaks me out the most ngl

The udder also bulges out from between the back legs

The show cow is so thin

And then compare these both to a Holstein-Frisian cross who leans more on the Frisian side;

Proper weight, developed legs. Its biggest "problem" is actually just the udder shape-- deep udders, which "hang" low like that, aren't optimal for milk-focused breeds because the higher away from the ground the less chance there is of infection. In that department, the "unselected" holstein clearly outclasses the holstein-frisian.

But it probably won't be surprising to hear that the "show holstein," with its massive, swollen udder, is SUPER prone to infections such as mastitis.

But it is also just more prone to getting sick generally

And, to keep up with these insane demands, holsteins need a TON of food. You aren't going to just turn these things out into a pasture and be done with it. Even its ancestor the Frisian needed premium Dutch polder grass to be such a good cow-- crank that up to 11 with these Monuments to Humanity's Hubrice

The Texas Longhorn developed in semi-feral conditions and can eat a bush to become the best thing in a 10 mile radius. The Scottish Highland was iron-forged in upland moors with a steady diet of turf and rain.

Meanwhile if a Holstein has less than 5 homemade meals a day without poland spring bottled water it will die to death.

And the WORST part? You have to use these if you want to make money in dairy farming. It's WAAY too expensive to just run a suboptimal farm. Their milk isn't great, but they sure do make a lot of it.

...so Holsteins and Holstein-Frisians (and other "super efficient" breeds) have absolutely decimated heritage cattle. The American Milking Devon is a deep reddish brown with gorgeous horns and low maintenance; rare. Randall Linebacks are painted with lines of white speckles down the back and can be used for any purpose; critically endangered. The Niata was a pug-faced cow who could fight jaguars; extinct.

And THAT'S what makes me hate them most of all. I LOVE cows, but whenever I see a reference to one, it's a holstein. It's always boring black and white splotches with big pink udders. They're practically synonymous with "cow" when their homogeniety is actually hiding much cooler breeds from you.

Did you know cows can be tiger-striped?

And that England has its own type of longhorn?

Or that cow horns can twist upwards like an antelope?

And that they can have REALLY LONG ears?

And that they can be blue?

And that's not even getting into some of the cows that have gotten a small crumb of attention lately, such as Highlands, Ankole-Watusi, and Texas Longhorns. There's so many cool cows out there! And they're all really different from holsteins! MOST of them are also a lot healthier and produce tastier milk and meat!

TL;DR yeah i don't like holsteins and I like sniping at them. For reasons both legit and petty.

[howtohero]

#206 Rural Superheroes

When most of picture superheroes they picture brooding men and women with capes draped around their shoulders and standing on buildings doing their best gargoyle impressions. Or you see them swinging and slinging around crowded streets using buildings as anchors. Or you see them hunched in a sewer eating pizza with their sewer-gator sidekicks after a long day of fighting crime. You definitely don’t imagine them standing next to a big pile of hay and holding a pitchfork and wearing overalls. (Guys I’m talking a huge pile of hay. Like the kind that looks like it’d be amazing to be dropped out of an airplane onto.) If you’ve never imagined a superhero stopping some disgraced middle school guidance counselor from rewriting reality and then going back home to milk the cows and tend to the corn then you’re just part of the problem. You need to reevaluate your personal biases. That’s right people, you heard it hear first! Superheroes can be countryfolk! And that’s a fact!

For some reason, lots of people think that the only reason any superhero would be in a rural area was if they were like, I don’t know, hiding their secret family on a secret farm. But that’s simply not true! In fact, that’s a terrible idea! Rural areas are not a safer place for your family to be, you know what kind of crimes go down in rural areas? Really weird ones. I’m talking like cow-related crimes. (Once the evil Cowcatcher built a giant cow robot to roam about rural Kansas just mooing really really loudly and scaring the stuffing out of everyone! That was a heck of a Thursday!) That’s just not normal! Don’t set up a secret farm to keep your family safe, just have a normal secret identity like everyone else and your family will be fine. 

So if you live in a rural area and have been looking around at all the insane cow-crimes that happen in your neighborhood and felt that you had no choice except to throw your hands up, shake your head, and exclaim “Aw shucks, if only there could be superheroes in rural areas!” Then you’re in luck! There can be superheroes in rural areas! I’m serious, we had our interns check the laws and there’s nothing saying that it can’t be done! (Except for the laws about vigilantism and stuff but they’ve got those laws in the cities too and nobody seems to care!). 

If you’re going to be a rural superhero though, you need to know that you’re going to have to operate a little bit differently than an urban crime fighter, but that doesn’t make you any less super! (What makes rural heroes less super is the fact that their are just less toxic-waste corporations in Middleofnowheresville, USA than there are in Heartoftheactionsville, USA.) For starters, you’re going to have an entirely different wardrobe in the country. Instead of grays and blacks you’re going to want to go with beautiful verdant greens and some mud-like gritty browns. If you’re going to be prowling around vast empty fields patrolling for cow-tippers and and goat-suckers, you’re going to want to look like a field. Glue bits of grass onto your costume, tape a live pig to your back, roll around in some manure. If you’re going to protect the farm you need to become the farm. 

Living in a rural area also drastically changes the options for both superhero hideouts and supervillain lairs. While urban heroes might find their superhero adventures taking place in corporate offices with mysterious secret floors or abandoned subway tunnels that have become home to an evil rat hive mind, for rural heroes it’s gonna be all barns all the time. Barns make for rather spacious superhero hideouts, there’s plenty of room for any gear or computers you might need for crime stopping and conducting illegal investigations, you can convert any stables into holding cells or trophy cases, and if any civilians wander on by all you need to do is cover everything with a layer of hay and no one will be the wiser! Rural supervillains are also very likely to use barns as their lairs, their’s will just be littered with disemboweled animals and fake cobwebs from the halloween popup store because they have a taste for the creepier things in life. While a barn might not be as glamorous as a time-displaced spaceship or a high-tech cave, they are competent and cost-effective hideouts and are good enough for any countryside-crusader. The only think you have to look out for is Jhonny McBarnburner whose entire thing is burning barns and would probably be more than happy to set a superhero’s barn on fire. That’s like a double-whammy, and such opportunities are rare in Jhonny McBarnburner’s life. Honestly, you should’ve been there when he first discovered that some barns were actually secret superhero hideouts. It was actually kind of adorable. His whole entire face lit up, it was as though he’d finally be validated for his extremely niche modus operandi after all these years. So honestly, I say you capitalize on his newfound enthusiasm for barn burning and frame uninhabited barns for being superhero hideouts. This can be as simple as just putting a sign in the ground that says “superhero hideout” in front of random abandoned barns. That should throw him off your scent for a while.

Getting around rural areas is very different from getting around crowded cities. There’s not a lot of people around so you’re not likely to run into a lot of traffic, but at the same time, populated areas are very far from each other. Even the distance between individual houses is much larger than the distance between any manmade structures in a big city. There are also a lot less superheroes per capita. All of this means you’re going to be responsible for protecting a very large open area. Which means you’re going to need a very specific kind of super-vehicle. You need something that’s fast, something bright so people will see it on poorly lit country roads, something that’s doused in cow-repellant or whatever to keep animals out of your way. It needs to have off-road capabilities, because if there’s a crime being committed in the middle of a farm or on top of a mountain, you don’t want to have to ditch your vehicle and jog to the crime. That’s a great way for crimes to happen. You really should not put so much faith in your jogging abilities. You can’t jog up a mountain, but you can drive an obscene vehicle up one. That’s what makes it obscene. You also might as well drive something fuel efficient, something that runs off of vegetable oil or something, there’s plenty of it around. 

Rural superheroes are also often, believe it or not, the first heroes on Earth to encounter alien invaders. Aliens just love alerting mankind to their presence through carving crop-circles and stealing cows. Depending on the species this can be anything from a harmless prank to a signed declaration of war. (Often the cow thing is because to most alien species, cows appear to be the most intelligent species on Earth. I mean, they live in their food, that’s just smart.) So you need to be prepared to single-handedly fight off an invading force at a moment’s notice. So I hope you’ve got some corn-powered laser blasters at your disposal, because you’re gonna need them sooner rather than later.

When it comes to crime fighting partners, you may find yourself in short supply. Heroes like Old MacDonald-Man or Crop-Top describe the loneliness as the most difficult part of rural crime fighting. In big cities you can’t walk more than five feet before bumping into someone who spends their nights wearing spandex and laying the smackdown on evil puzzle enthusiasts or finger-puppeteers. But in the country you’re likely to never run into another superhero in your neighborhood. That’s why you need to take on an animal sidekick. Fortunately, rural communities are a great place to find some domesticated animals that would be down to come fight crimes with you. In order to determine which farm animals would be the best crime fighting partners we actually took a husbandry course. (Ok, you got us, Dr. Brainwave got engaged and we all chipped in and paid for him to go to a husbandry course so he could learn how to be a good husband and the rest of us went for emotional support but it turns out none of knew what husbandry was and we were not in the right place but we learned a lot and had fun and it turned out that Dr. Brainwave’s engagement was fake and part of some villainous scheme to poison the concept of weddings or something so it didn’t matter anyway.) During this course we learned a lot about the breeding of crops and animals and we have scientifically determined that the best possible animal sidekick for a rural superhero is a goat on roller blades. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Are you idiots joking? You guys go on and on and on and on about how roosters are the best animal sidekicks and now you’re going to come at me and say that goats are the best animal sidekick for a rural superhero? Are you kidding me? Is this a joke?” First of all, yeah, everything we say is a joke. This is a comedy blog. And second of all, hey tone back the attitude why don’t you? Gosh you’re being real hostile about this. Roosters are the ideal superhero sidekick for urban or space-faring superheroes. But they’re useless for rural superheroes. Roosters are great for waking you up? Rural-superheroes already wake up with the sun to tend to their crops, don’t need a rooster. Roosters can fly? No crimes are committed in the skyline of a rural community. There is no skyline. Anybody can scramble to the roof of the local post office or pitchfork wholesaler, don’t need a rooster. Roosters can attack your enemies with their sharp beaks and talons? Uh, hello, pitchfork wholesaler? There’s no shortage of sharp farming tools that rural superheroes can use in lieu of a beak or talons, don’t need a rooster. A goat on roller blades on the other hand, can thoroughly mess a criminal up. Imagine all the rage and power of a common goat, but with the speed of roller blades? You rural criminals may as well just pack it in, you’re not getting away with anything with Thunderbolt Cannonberg, goat superhero, on the scene. 

Crime is everywhere, even in the idyllic countryside. So don’t be afraid to be the change you’d like to see in your community and start fighting back against the chupacabra or Terrence, the kid who steals pigs. If you follow these tips, and take a moment to appreciate the beauty of the land and sky around you every once in a while, you should have a wonderful and productive career as a sylvan superhero.

[orcinus-ocean]

Fertile hybrid animals

and their weirdnesses

Everyone knows that if you cross a horse (Equus caballus) and a donkey (Equus africanus), you get a mule (mare x jack) or hinny (jenny x stallion), and they are sterile. It has led to the idea that most or all hybrids between two species of animal will be sterile.

In fact, even mules aren't 100% sterile. Very, very rarely, a female mule will give birth to a foal, fathered either by a horse or donkey (as male mules are always sterile). It has happened about 60 times in 500 years.

The reason is that donkeys have 62 chromosomes and horses 64, so mules and hinnys have 63. Why some rare females are fertile, we don't know.

Interestingly, mules have been scientifically described as the most intelligent of all equines, beating both of its parents in tests of cognitive ability.

Beefalo

Beefalo are a hybrid between American bison (Bison bison, often incorrectly called "buffalo") and domestic cattle (Bos primigenius). Interestingly, a male bison crossed with a domestic cow will rarely result in calves, but the opposite, crossing a domestic bull with a female bison, works much better. In those bull x bison cow crosses, only female hybrids will be fertile, but the males are mostly (not always) sterile.

Żubroń

A Żubroń is a hybrid between wisent (European bison, Bison bonasus) and domestic cattle.

Similar to but slightly different from beefalo, females are always fertile, but first-generation males are always sterile. Cross a female back to a domestic bull or wisent, and male and female offspring alike will be fertile. Strangely, first-generation crosses alwaysh ave to be born through c-section, because while pregnancies are carried full-term, birth is never induced naturally.

Dzo or Dzomo

The Dzo is the bull and Dzomo is the cow. They are a hybrid between domestic yak (Bos grunniens) and domestic cattle.

As with many other bovine hybrids, bulls are sterile while the cows are fertile. Similar to lion/tiger hybrids, they are larger and stronger than both of their parents.

Yakalo

I can find no photos of this cross, but the yakalo is, understandably, a hybrid between a yak and an American bison. No, this picture is not of a yakalo, despite commonly being spread as one. It is a takin, not a bovine at all but related to sheep and goats.

The yakalo was created as an experiment in the 1920s, using yak bulls with bison cows as well as beefalo cows. Very few calves survived, only females turned out to be fertile, and the experiments ended in 1928, which is why there are no modern photos of a yakalo, because the animal simply doesn’t exist today.

Despite there being so many different bovine hybrids, water buffalo (Bubalus arnee) and domestic cattle cannot conceive offspring together. In laboratory experiments, the embryos fail around the 8-cell stage.

Cama

One of the coolest hybrid animals in my opinion (and one that looks like it could be a real animal - seriously, it looks way more normal than a llama or alpaca), is the Cama, which is of course - a hybrid between a llama (Lama glama) and a (dromedary) camel (Camelus dromedarius).

Llamas and camels have the same number of chromosomes, so as far as we know, the cama is fertile. Frighteningly however, it's the father who is the camel, and mom is the little llama. Because of this huge size difference, camas are only created through artificial insemination. Inseminating a camel with llama sperm doesn't work, however.

Camel

I know it looks fake, but it's not. The animal is likely overweight, but still, this is what you get if you cross a two-humped Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus) with a one-humped Dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius). An in-between animal, with shorter legs and thicker build like a Bactrian, and a single hump like a Dromedary, but the hump is ENORMOUS.

They are fertile and crossing them back to either species looks like this:

(Inaccurately called "breeds", Bactrian and Dromedary are two entirely separate species, like horse and donkey, or gray wolf and coyote, and there are no actual breeds among domestic camels, only bloodlines.)

Feline hybrids

Cats are "extreme" in their ability to produce fertile hybrids between species, genera, even further apart still.

The Bengal cat, one of the most popular cat breeds in the world, originates as a hybrid between domestic cat (Felis catus) with the Asian leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis). The picture above shows a first-generation cross, while the purebred modern cat has much less wild ALC in its genes.

The Savannah cat, is a hybrid between the domestic cat and the medium-sized African Serval (Leptailurus serval). They too, are perfectly fertile and have become a popular (although rare and expensive) pet breed.

There are so many small cat hybrids, I won't include them all, but these two are notable. On to the big cats, we of course have...

Ligers and tigons

A male lion (Panthera leo) crossed with a female tiger (Panthera tigris) will create the more well-known liger, while a male tiger with a female lion will create a tigon.

As with the bovine hybrids above, the females have been proven to be fertile, as females of both ligers and tigons have bred healthy offspring with both lions and tigers.

Pumapard

Surely one of the strangest hybrids I've ever seen*, the pumapard is, as the name suggests, a hybrid between a puma or cougar, and a leopard. This stuffed animal shows clear signs of a puma's facial markings and morphology, and the spots are supposed to come from the leopard (puma cubs, whiel spotted, look nothing like this).

The reason this is so strange is because unlike all the other animals I've shown you, this is not the cross between two species or even two genera, but two entirely separate subfamilies. The puma is from the "small cat" subfamily (Felinae), and the leopard is from the "big cat" subfamily (Pantherinae). That makes this cross as likely to occur as a tiger crossed with a domestic cat, because they share the same last common ancestor as pumas and leopards (the same common ancestor that split off into Felinae and Pantherinae).

It would be far more believable if a puma had bred with a smaller spotted cat, in the same subfamily, but this is well-documented as being puma x leopard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumapard

They are unlikely to have been fertile, I guess the only way to find out the truth would be to breed one today, but I had to include them here because they are so strange.

*The other would be someone's random pet bird I came across on the internet, it was a pet cockatoo in Australia and it looked so strange, the only thing it could be was a hybrid between a Greater sulphur-crested cockatoo and a tiny Cockatiel.