A South American Cow with Swiss ancestry? (Image R. Pasquier)

The Fribourg Cow was bred early in the 20th century as a robust allrounder livestock. Later it was crossed and replaced by the brown, Canadian Holsein cows, which were sensible but more productive. Finally it was believed extinct in the 1970s.

But in 2005 a retired economist went to Southern Chile on the tracks of ancestors who emigrated around 1880. He did not only find distant cousins, but to his surprise also familiar-looking cows that the emigrants probably ordered from Switzerland in the 1930s. Pro Specie Rara was contacted but kept quiet until recently. The time is short because although crosses with American high performance breds turned out to be not fit for the rough Chilean environment, the suspected Fribourg Cows are crossed with local mongrels.


What makes this story somewhat bizarre is that the black-white cow pattern is to this day used in Fribourg marketing. And in the early 1990s I was taught in elementary school that the Fribourg cow is one of the four races that live in the country. But the last Fribourg cow of Switzerland was butchered in 1975!

Not a great picture but Farmer Bob says we are looking at a Friesen / Hosltein there. Not to say the article is wrong but if I know my cows (and I do) the pic is a library pic produced when some editor said "find me a black and white cow, quick" .

Canadian Holstein cows are not really brown

http://www.holstein.ca/english/Breed/index.asp
http://www.zsz.ch/aktuell/pdf/zsz_panorama_kuehe.pdf

These brown cows are quite swiss

http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/cattle/braunvieh/

The last purebred Fribourg cow that is. They've been crossbred with Canadian Holstein which are also black-white so I guess their offspring are still black-white?

I think it's cropped from a larger picture that was printed in last NZZ am Sonntag and is supposed to be from Chile. NZZaS wrote that a characteristic of the Fribourg cow is the funnel shaped udder.

More pictures on the Pro Specie Rara website and the NZZaS article.

I confused the breeds. The NZZaS confirms Andreas' post. I should've ruminated this article...

and then looked like this!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:T...cooked-MCB.jpg

I don't think I ever came across a Holstein that wasn't black and white .... but when crossed with the smaller Friesens which are also normally balck and white but with an occasional red and white thrown in the red sometimes pops up and could be considered brown by some.


These are, of course, beef cattle and not worthy of being included in this dicussion .

'tis a Friesian .... Holsteins are lanky angular awful looking things.

Looks more like a cross to me - too long for a pure Friesen and a tad too much black in it for a Holstein?

All this talk is making me nostalgic, it's been so long since I had my arm up a cows bum but I guess it's like riding a bicycle.

actually, there is a right mish-mash when you look closer, is that a Galloway Grey hill cow in the background ? Also, look at the ground, not typical dairy fodder (rocks) .... is this from Morgannon's smallholding by any chance ?

Arr, it's good to see a man who knows his coos.

Makes me wonder why you always choose the ugly one though......

now if I was a real "Cowboy", I would be calling your family retards & asking you outside for a glass of milk .... but as a man of honour, I'll go for 500ml of foaming stuff at 1 pace, any time you like.

mmmmmm foaming stuff ......