Canada: ALBERTA: The Cattalo

Canadian cattlemen wanted a new breed of cattle. They wanted a breed that could withstand the sub-zero winters and swirling blizzards of the western provinces. In a storm, cattle huddled with their hindquarters facing the wind, and often smothered in the thick snow. When recumbent cows and steers tried to get up, they instinctively tried to raise their hindquarters first. Often they fell on their faces, starved to death.

Cattlemen observed the habits of the buffalo. It faced the storm; it got up head first. Why not crossbreed buffalo and domestic cattle? The Dominion Experimental Farm at Wainwright, Alta. tried it.

First they bred a buffalo bull with a domestic cow, found that the calf's disproportionately big head and shoulders Killed three out of four cows at birth. Then they crossed domestic bulls with buffalo cows, and normal births ensued. But there was one drawback: the first hybrids were sterile. Nevertheless the breeders persisted.

They crossed Aberdeen Angus, Shorthorn and Hereford stock with buffalo. The offspring were called cattalo. First generation cattalos looked like king-sized cattle with a marked shoulder hump. By the third generation the hump had been bred out, reproduction bred in. So crossbreeding was dropped for straight cattalo-raising.

By last week, after 25 years of experiment, the Dominion Experimental Farm had gone far toward establishing the fact that Canadian cattle could be successfully buffaloed. Browsing in a special enclosure in the Wainwright Buffalo Park were 75 precious, sturdy calves born this spring. They were true cattalo, not hybrids but a distinctive breed. The experts were finally sure that they had taken the cattalo out of the mule's biological dead end.

Today's cattalo looks more like a bull than a buffalo, but it has inherited the buffalo's robust qualities. It is bigger than a domestic bull, can stand cold much better. In weather which would freeze cattle to death, the cattalo survives.

Bred strictly for beef, not milk, the cattalo weighs up to 1½ times the average steer. Last year cattalo meat was sold on public markets and nobody knew the difference. Soon the first cattalo will leave the Government ranges to begin populating the prairie corrals. Last week A. S. McLellan, Government animal husbandry expert who has been mating cattalo for 14 years, said happily: "We've got what we were after."