Landrace
A local population of cattle shaped by a place and its people rather than by a written breed standard.
Also: native breed, local breed, non-descript cattle
A landrace is a local type of livestock that has grown up over a long time in one area, adapted to its climate, grazing, diseases and the needs of the farmers who keep it. Landraces are often more varied in looks than formal breeds, and their animals are usually not registered. Many of the world's cattle are landraces, especially in Africa and Asia; in India a large share of cattle are recorded in the livestock census as non-descript, meaning they belong to no recognised breed. Some landraces have later been described, named and registered as breeds. Conservationists value landraces for traits such as disease resistance and thrift that modern breeds may have lost.