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Tough Breeds Of Livestock Disappearing: Saving Them Before It Is Too Late
Science Daily ^ | 2-17-2008 | Virginia Tech.

Posted on 02/17/2008 4:26:30 PM PST by blam

Tough Breeds Of Livestock Disappearing: Saving Them Before It Is Too Late

Dr. Phil Sponenberg with a Spanish-style Choctaw horse. (Credit: John McCormick, Virginia Tech)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 17, 2008) — Phil Sponenberg, professor of pathology and genetics in the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, has spent more than 30 years working to make sure certain living pieces of history — some dating to the 15th century — don’t become extinct.

Sponenberg's brand of living history comes in the form of various rare strains of livestock, which were involved in events like Christopher Columbus’ discovery of the Caribbean Islands and the Spanish conquest of the Americas.

Sponenberg’s involvement began with Choctaw horses when he was a college student, and has spread to other kinds of animals through the years. Ancestors of Choctaw horses, Colonial Spanish horses were brought to the Caribbean Islands by Columbus and to Mexico by Hernándo Cortés. The horses were stolen from Mexico and rapidly traded north by Pueblo Indians.

These horses were noted by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark during their expedition to explore the Pacific Northwest. In fact, the Spanish influence extended up to the Carolinas, across the Gulf Coast, and throughout the West.

“The Choctaws were one of the tribes displaced from Mississippi, and they took their livestock with them,” Sponenberg says.

The breeding stock has dispersed and not everyone can recognize a rare breed when they have one. Sponenberg received a call about a short horse that was about to be gelded. It turned out that the small horse, Icki, was a Choctaw. “Icki was the end of his bloodline,” says Sponenberg, who was able to buy the stallion and return him to a small herd to sire more Choctaw horses.

Sponenberg has also identified another group of the Spanish horses still in the South — “Marsh Tacky” horses, which were used to manage cattle and to chase wild hogs across swampy terrain.

Another Spanish livestock breed Sponenberg has run across in his travels is South Pineywoods cattle — also known as Florida Cracker Cattle. Small, rugged, horned, heat-tolerant, and disease-resistant, “these cattle are exquisitely adapted to this environment,” Sponenberg says. They are also long-lived and productive.

Through the years, Sponenberg has also found more Spanish horses, cotton patch geese, old Spanish goats, and some locally adapted Spanish sheep.

In fact, Sponenberg himself is the owner of a Choctaw horse, and he raises Tennessee myotonic (fainting) goats. The goats are from two old lines from New Braunfels, Texas.

Saving rare breeds

Sponenberg says he loves field work — discovering a new pocket of preserved livestock, making friends, and working with the people who manage the animals. His success, he says, is a result of the friendships and interest he has created — but also because of the strategies he has developed through scientific research.

Along the way, Sponenberg has done work and published strategies specific to rare breeds conservation, documentation, and genetic management.

Now, the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy is providing technical support for recapturing certain animals for pure breeding. The Bureau of Land Management contacts him to identify Spanish-type horses in wild herds to help the bureau conserve the horses.

Sponenberg stays connected with conservation efforts and affiliations and works to establish new relationships. He has collaborated with the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy since 1978, and with Iberian researchers since the early 1990s.

As a result of his work, several new strains of horses have been added and excluded through detailed blood typing or DNA typing.

About other rare breeds

Pineywoods cattle

remain from the earliest days of Spanish control of what is now the southeastern United States usefulness to local populations as sources of meat, milk, hides, and oxen persists today Cotton patch geese

used extensively to weed cotton fields in the early 1900s avidly consume grassy weeds and leave alone broad-leaved plants like cotton Pine Tacky saddle horses

local Spanish-type horses, found in the deep South only three have been discovered and identified to date Gulf Coast or Native sheep

adapted descendants of old family flocks from the coastal deep South trace back to an Iberian origin and are now being registered by the Gulf Coast Native Sheep Alliance A Boer goat descendant Local goats

early extinct, largely due to crossbreeding to the imported Boer goat identified strains are exquisitely adapted to the local area Swine

remnants of an old Iberian type, usually black or grey in color, and poorly muscled historically desired as a source of lard and cured meat often earnotched, several have fused toes (mulefoot) and wattles (fleshy appendages) on the neck Adapted from materials provided by Virginia Tech.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: breeds; genetics; livestock; tough
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To: blam

bump for later read.


21 posted on 02/17/2008 5:51:46 PM PST by khnyny (Quid Est Veritas)
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To: blam

Those photo’s could be my dog ,, we all thought she was lab/shephard but she has the facial shape/tail shape and coloration of these dogs ,, we’re in FL and “Mulan” was a throwaway .. we’re in a good neighborhood in a town that is 50% Mexican farmworker... one of them dumped her at about 10-12 weeks when they went home... she is a true pack animal and is a great (mostly silent) hunter... I don’t know too many other 75# dogs that can catch birds....


22 posted on 02/17/2008 6:38:30 PM PST by Neidermeyer
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To: blam

The name actually comes from the herders who used whips to keep them under control. I’ve never heard the cattle being called that though. I’ve heard them called Yellow Hammers. They were so plentiful in the 18th and 19th century in Florida that some ranchers became millionaires exporting them to Cuba. Florida had millions of them running wild. The ranchers used Marsh Tackys given to them by the Seminoles to herd with. Marsh Tackys have a natural ability from birth to herd cattle without any training. Although smaller, the Marsh Tacky could also outrun a western quarter horse in the quarter mile. Now extinct, the Seminoles also used a specific breed of dog to herd cattle that had superior abilities.


23 posted on 02/17/2008 6:43:10 PM PST by BerryDingle (I know how to deal with communists, I still wear their scars on my back from Hollywood-Ronald Reagon)
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To: blam

Very interesting. My husband raises rodeo bulls and an old line from Florida is called Plummer, after a Charlie Plummer. They look very much like the Florida Cracker Cow that you have posted.


24 posted on 02/17/2008 6:57:21 PM PST by Ditter
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To: Ditter
I did a search on Charlie Plummer and this is what I got.
25 posted on 02/17/2008 7:02:03 PM PST by blam (Secure the border and enforce the law)
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To: blam
That doesn’t say anything about them being buckers but they are quite famous. Our pasture is full of the little white spotted things just born in the last month.
26 posted on 02/17/2008 7:08:47 PM PST by Ditter
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To: BerryDingle
Florida exports more cattle than any other state in the Union.

California exports the most rice.

27 posted on 02/17/2008 7:15:06 PM PST by blam (Secure the border and enforce the law)
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To: RightWhale
They say there were horses in the Americas before the Euros introduced them and that some tribes had them domesticated. I am not conversant with breeds of horses so won’t add anything beyond this.

Who are 'they'?
28 posted on 02/17/2008 11:56:00 PM PST by goldfinch
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