Boer Goat, Queensland, Australia - Terraweena, Australian Breeding Services

Cattle

ABS, in conjunction with its Boer and Angora imports, also sourced and collected three cattle breeds from Africa - the Tuli and the Mashona from Zimbabwe and the Boran from Kenya.

The breeds were identified in 1988 by a Working Party Committee of the Standing Committee on Agriculture (SCA) following research carried out by the CSIRO Division of tropical Animal Science.

t was concluded that the indigenous breeds were highly productive, largely due to high reproductive weights. They were considered hardy with a natural tolerance to drought and to tick and fly resistance.

The SCA Report made the following recommendations :

'These breeds have the potential to substantially increase reproductive rates with consequent gains in livestock turn-off from Australia's northern cattle industry. Given satisfactory evaluation and adaption within the industry, national gains are conservatively estimated at approximately $180 million per annum.'

This report led ABS to import the new genetics into Australia where we have been breeding and exporting the genetics since their arrival in Australia.

Boran Cattle

The Boran is one of the oldest breeds in Africa, originating with the Borana people in Ethiopia. In the 1920s, European ranchers in Kenya purchased Boran cattle and developed a breed known as the improved Boran.

The Improved Boran has been bred and selected mainly as a beef animal. It is possible that, in the process, some herds of Boran cattle may have acquired a little European blood from the European stock used in the 1920s but there is no evidence of this either in colour or in reduction of hump size.

Mashona Cattle

Tuli and Mashona Bull History of the breed

The Mashona cattle are Sanga types with similar production characteristics to the Tuli / Tswana.

The Mashona breed is the most numerous in eastern and central Zimbabwe, a highland area in which pasture quality, particularly in winter, is lower than the surrounding lowlands. Following the pandemics of rinderpest and east coast fever which decimated cattle populations at the end of the nineteenth century, Mashonaland a province of Zimbabwe, was restocked with female cattle from Zambia, Barotseland and Malawi. The predominant type was the Angoni, a small-humped zebu breed which had some resistance to rinderpest.