A beautiful book has been produced in The Netherlands, exploring all aspects of their native, belted cattle, the Lakenfelder. Published by Roodbont Agricultural Publishers, and entitled “De Lakenfelder: niet uit het veld te slaan”, the book seems to cover everything from the genetics of black- and red-belted animals to a recipe for Stroganoff!
It is richly illustrated throughout with amazing photographs and copies of a range of artwork, from a cave painting to a picture of the Nativity from 1438 to modern paintings. Members wishing to use their cattle for an on-farm diversification project may gain inspiration from the photograph on page 167, where two cows are pulling a trailer-load of children, presumably on a farm tour….
The book also mentions other belted cattle including Belted Galloways and our own Welsh cattle. The author, Reurt Boelema, contacted Mike Lewis via the website, and the photograph that Mike supplied can be seen, along with a brief description, on page 58. An unofficial translation of the entry is as follows:
Belted Welsh
The Belted Welsh is a black-horned variety of banded cattle. It comes from Wales and is really a product of cross-breeding with single-colour Welsh Black cow with a Lakenfelder bull. On the other hand, a number of Welsh people think that the Belted Welsh appeared in Wales thousands of years ago and is therefore one of the most original cattle breeds in Great Britain. There is really no plausible proof for this. Belted Welsh cattle are very rare. The most reliable sources say that the Black Welsh only came into being in the middle of the nineteenth century from the mixing of North and South Welsh breeds and their varieties. The first official mention of banded cattle in Wales comes from 1777. These animals are in the possession and control of the Evans family.
They probably mean the Jones family of Beddcoedwr!