Albera

What do Albera cattle look like?

The Albera is a small taurine breed, humpless and slight of frame. The head is long and heavy-looking, with prominent eyes and a long face; the muzzle is usually black-pigmented or edged with lighter hair. Horns are short, half-moon or hooked in shape, white with dark tips, and often rough on grown animals. The neck is long and flat. The body is narrow, deep and flattened, with a prominent, split withers (the ridge between the shoulders) and a back that dips; the belly is big and the rump level. Hair is thick and comes in many shades, running from black to blond and paling on the lower body, ears and forehead. Cows reach about 121 cm at the withers and 275 kg; bulls about 126 cm and 350 kg. Two types exist: the dark Negra and the paler Fagina.

Where does the Albera come from?

Cattle have been kept on the Albera Massif since at least the nineteenth century, but the breed was only described in writing in 1957. That early account split the animals into three groups: a dark one, a paler and more variable one, and a third that came from crossing with Braunvieh. Today only two are recognised, the dark Negra and the paler Fagina. Testing in 1999 left the Fagina animals sharing more with the Bruna de los Pirineos than with the Negra. A keepers' association was formed in 2008. Official recognition followed on 27 July 2011, bringing a breed standard and a herd book.

What the Albera is known for

These cattle are built for hard mountain weather. They take cold well but suffer in heat, and their light build and sure feet let them work across steep, rough ground. They are tough and enduring. Left to themselves for most of the year, they keep their distance from people and are not easy to handle. Their output is modest: meat yield is low, a cow gives barely enough milk for her calf, and she calves only once in two years. Their real value lies in their agility and their ability to live on what the mountain offers.

How the Albera is bred and kept

Keeping Albera cattle is close to letting them run wild. They stay out all year, between about 200 and 1000 metres up, and find their own food in the woods and meadows, browsing beech shoots and mast (the fallen nuts and seeds of the trees) as well as grass. At some times of year they are given extra feed. Calves are born out on the mountain with no herdsman present, one every two years for each cow. A herd book and a breed standard were set up after official recognition in 2011, and an association founded in 2008 looks after the breed's interests.

What the Albera is kept for

Meat is the main product, though the carcase is small: animals kill out at roughly 35 to 40 per cent, so the beef yield is low. Milk is not a crop; a cow gives barely enough for her calf. The breed's other job is land care. Turned onto scrub, the cattle eat back the undergrowth, which helps to lower the risk of forest fires, and they are used in forest clearing for the same purpose.

The land and climate of the Albera

The Albera lives on the Albera Massif, the upland that divides Catalonia from France, at heights of roughly 200 to 1000 metres. The ground is steep and rough, partly wooded, with beech among the trees and open meadows between. Winters are cold, and the breed copes with that well; heat is harder for it. The cattle are outside the whole year, in semi-feral conditions, feeding on whatever the forest and pasture give them. Breeders count on about one cow to every 8 or 10 hectares where the herd is expected to feed itself.

Who keeps the Albera

Small farms on both sides of the border keep these cattle: Catalan holdings in Alt Empordà, on the Spanish side of the massif, and French holdings in Vallespir, in Pyrénées-Orientales. Herds are left largely alone. The animals see little of people, and contact is mostly limited to the times when extra feed is brought out, or when the herd is handled for health checks and the paperwork that goes with farm aid. The keepers are represented by an association set up in 2008.

Custom and folk tradition

Local practice gives the breed two names, and the word for the pale animals is a piece of lore in itself: fagina comes from the beech, the tree whose tender shoots and fruit these cows seek out. The animals are known for living almost wholly free, finding their own living in the woods and meadows and coming near the farm only when feed is put out for them. That half-wild habit sits at the centre of how the breed is understood locally.

Keeping Albera cattle

To hold a herd, the land needs water, in the region of one watering point for every 10 to 40 hectares, plus feed put by for winter. Fencing is needed both to keep the cows in and to control which ground they graze, and a covered space for sick animals. Stocking rates quoted for scrub control run from 0.2 to 1.4 livestock units (UBM) per hectare; the fire-risk programme FOC Verd II uses 0.34 UBM per hectare. Where the herd must feed itself, one cow to 8 or 10 hectares is suggested. Hoses are needed for cleaning and health work.

Related breeds and crosses

Of the three kinds once described, one came from crossing with Braunvieh, the brown mountain cattle of the Alps. The pale Fagina type has more in common, genetically, with the Bruna de los Pirineos than with its own dark Negra counterpart. Those two names, Albera Negra and Albera Fagina, are the types still recognised today.

Numbers, conservation and the herd book

At the close of 2014 the breed numbered 763 animals, 618 of them female and 145 male. Another account says the two types together come to fewer than 300, with the pale animals outnumbering the dark ones. The FAO classed the breed in 2007 as endangered-maintained. Recognition came in 2011, when a standard and a herd book were put in place, and a keepers' association had already been founded in 2008. The breed belongs to the Albera Massif, on the Spanish and French sides of the border.

Questions people ask about Albera

Good reading and sources

• Albera (cattle) on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data