Heck cattle
Heck bull, cow, and calf
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| Country of origin | Germany |
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| Distribution | Europe, especially Central and Western Europe |
| Use | grazing projects; in zoos, agriculture |
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| Coat | varied shadings of red, brown, black |
| Horn status | Horned, diverse shapes, directions and sizes |
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Heck cattle are a hardy breed of domestic cattle. These cattle are the result of an attempt by the Heck brothers to breed back the extinct aurochs from modern aurochs-derived cattle in the 1920s and 1930s. Controversy revolves around methodology and success of the programme. There are considerable differences between Heck cattle and the aurochs in build, height, and body proportions. Furthermore, there are other cattle breeds which resemble their wild ancestors at least as much as Heck cattle.
Heck cattle originated in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s in an attempt to breed back domestic cattle to their ancestral form: the aurochs (Bos primigenius primigenius). In the first years of the Weimar Republic, the brothers Heinz and Lutz Heck independently started their extensive breeding-back programmes. Their motivation behind that was to rescue the aurochs from oblivion because it was constantly confused with the wisent, the other large bovine of Holocene Europe. The Heck brothers believed that creating a look-alike and showing both species next to each other would help to show the difference between the two species to a broader public. Apart from that, they believed they were able to reconstruct the species and therefore to correct the mistake man made when killing the species off.Heinz was the director of the Hellabrunn Zoological Gardens in Munich and Lutz of the Berlin Zoological Gardens. Only eleven years after they started their breeding experiments, just as the Weimar Republic was drawing to a close, they each announced success. The two brothers used different selections of cattle breeds in their breeding-back attempts. For example, Lutz Heck (in Berlin) used Spanish fighting bulls, while Heinz Heck (in Munich) did not. The Berlin breed seemingly did not survive the Second World War, so all modern Heck cattle go back to the experiments of Heinz Heck in Munich. The ancestral breeds used include:
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