LETHBRIDGE – Arnold Willms has been slowly building a herd of Normande cattle from a single cow for nearly 30 years.
Employed at Southern Breeders, Willms admired a newly imported bull named Concorde that had arrived from France in 1973.
“Concorde was a beautiful bull,” Willms said.
The company imported a broad selection of European cattle as interest and demand in the new exotics swept across North America.
Willms and his wife, Clara, wanted a small, quiet herd for their farm on the outskirts of Lethbridge and after seeing the bull, they applied to import a French heifer. It arrived two years later and became the foundation of their herd, which now consists of about 40 animals. The cow lived to be 14 and Willms still has some of its frozen embryos.
Read Also
Calf hormone implants can give environmental, financial wins
Hormone implants can lead to bigger calves — reducing greenhouse gas intensity, land use intensity and giving the beef farmer more profit, Manitoba-based model suggests.
The Normandes were at the tail end of the live imports before the bottom fell out of continental sales. Only a few people had the breed and finding more seedstock was a constant challenge. The Willms imported a bull from the United States and scoured the country seeking more.
Their first calf crop consisted of six bulls, which made expansion difficult.
“To build a herd from one cow is a very tough thing to do,” said Willms.
At 68, he wants someone to take over the herd and keep the breed going.
Normandes never became as popular as some continental breeds. There is a small group of breeders in Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin, where the cattle are used for beef and milk production.
They may be red and white, black and white or triple coloured. The colour pattern ranges from solid to flecks across the body. They have short curving horns with black around the eyes, muzzle and ears.
They have a relatively short head with an indentation between the forehead and nose.
It is believed Vikings brought them to Normandy and other parts of northern France about 1,000 years ago. Living on rough terrain, they evolved into a dual purpose breed, producing milk and beef.
After some crossbreeding with Shorthorns, the French started a herd book in 1883 to record beef and dairy types. Milk monitoring started in 1907.
The breed suffered setbacks during the Second World War when the Allies invaded Normandy. A number of animals were killed and breeders worked hard to rebuild.
It ultimately became the second largest dairy breed in France and until the late 1950s, about one quarter of all cattle in the country were Normande.
Cattle were shipped worldwide with large numbers ending up in South America starting in the 1890s. There are about four million head in South America, with the largest herd in Colombia – 1.6 million head. Other herds are in Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay and Paraguay.
