Santa Gertrudis beef

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Santa Gertrudis beef.

The Santa Gertrudis beef is a breed of cattle from Texas in the USA .

It was bred on the King Ranch in South Texas. The name comes from the Santa Gertrudis Creek that flows through the ranch.

The breed was officially recognized in 1940, making it the first breed to emerge in the United States. At the King Ranch, bulls of the Zebu breed Brahman were crossed with meat Shorthorn cows. The offspring were crossed with each other again according to a certain pattern, so that the breed now ultimately consists of 3/8 Brahman and 5/8 Shorthorn. However, there is little or no record of the early crossings and the crossings were conducted in open land. To make matters worse, the King Ranch did not have any purebred Brahman bulls and had to buy them.

There is also a rumor that Monkey, the progenitor of the breed - all of today's Santa Gertrudis descend from him - had an African father ( zebu ) and a milk Shorthorn mother. The consistent deep red color of the Santa Gertrudis also suits the Africans much better than the Brahman. The high milk production for a beef breed (which is reflected in the rapid growth of the calves and high market-ready yearling weights) would also go very well with the milk short horn. The cows that Monkey mated can of course be descended from Brahman and Fleisch-Shorthorn cattle, among others. All of this would mean that Santa Gertrudis is actually a four-race crossbreed.

Whatever the early history of breeding, Santa Gertrudis is considered a meat breed today. The adults are very large and have long legs (a great advantage in cactus land). They have a high heat tolerance and parasite resistance and are ideally adapted to desert and semi-desert climates, where large temperature fluctuations occur.

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