Buša

What do Buša cattle look like?

Buša is the umbrella name for the small native cows of the Balkan peninsula, a set of local types rather than one uniform breed. Each country's animals differ a little in size, shape and colouring. Taken together they are little beasts with short horns: a grown animal stands some 90 to 115 cm at the withers, the ridge between the shoulder blades, and weighs 150 to 250 kg. The frame is compact and solid, which let oxen of such modest height pull carts and ploughs. Newborn calves weigh only about 15 kg, and a cow's working life lasts many years.

Where does the Buša come from?

The Buša belongs to the Balkans: Albania above all, then Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, the lands of the old Yugoslav federation. Through the first half of the twentieth century it was the everyday cow of the peninsula's villages, and its range is described as the country south of the rivers Sava and Danube, reaching from Avala to Olympus on one line and from Rhodope to Velebit on the other. Work on Y-chromosome markers ties the Buša to the Simmental and to the cattle of Italy, and shows the Red Gorbatov and Yurino types of central Asia to be relatives as well.

What the Buša is known for

Hardiness is the Buša's strongest point. The cattle resist disease, cope with hard climates, and get by on rough fodder and meagre keep, which is what hill farms of the past could offer. They take to karst country, the bare limestone land of thin soils, without trouble, and stay sturdy and undemanding on it. Their milk is fatty for a breed of this size. Pulling power is modest, so the oxen were beasts for smallholdings rather than for heavy haulage.

How the Buša is bred and kept

Heifers are ready for the bull at about two years old. Conception runs at 85 to 90 percent, and a cow keeps breeding until she is twelve, living to roughly twenty in all. Calves are born at around 15 kg. Traditional management was spare: calves were weaned early, young females were mated young, and feed and shelter were poor, and the breed's build and physiology bear the marks of that. Herds ran extensively alongside sheep and goats on mountain grazing. In Croatia, from the early 1900s to the Second World War, Buša cows were crossed with Montafon and Tyrolean Grey bulls brought from Austria.

What the Buša is kept for

Three kinds of work come from this cow: pulling, milk and meat. Draught power is modest but real. Cows give roughly 600 to 1500 kg of milk a year, the figure shifting with the region, and the milk tests between 4.05 and 5.6 percent fat, good material for the kitchen. Households of the past combined cow's and sheep's milk into cheese, cream and butter, and beef was dried so it would keep through the year. Together these roles made the Buša a complete smallholder's animal in the hills.

The land and climate of the Buša

Buša ground is hill and mountain country across the Balkan peninsula, much of it karst, a dry limestone landscape with thin soil, bare rock and little surface water. The cattle live outdoors for most of the year and are stabled for two to six winter months; in some districts they ranged free in every season. The traditional grazing year took the herds up to mountain pastures for summer and brought them down to permanent villages at lower levels before the cold.

Who keeps the Buša

The Buša belonged to ordinary mountain households rather than to specialist herders. Families lived together in large cooperative households, with work shared out by sex and age, and the animals supplied the staples of life from little input. Cattle, sheep and goats formed one grazing system, summer on the high pastures and winter down at the lower villages, and milk and meat were the raw materials of the kitchen: butter, cheese and dried meat for the year.

Custom and folk tradition

Descriptions of the old husbandry read like a lesson in making do. Pens had no roof, and winter quarters were simply places out of the wind. The cattle ate what poor grazing offered and needed less attention than the sheep they lived among. Writers saw the Buša's small frame and modest output as the shape that centuries of spare hill farming had moulded, its body and performance reflecting the hard conditions of the upland country where it was bred.

Keeping Buša cattle

Feed needs are low and illness is seldom serious, the breed resisting disease well. Winter means two to six months indoors, with the rest of the year spent outside; the old pens were open to the sky and winter sites were picked for shelter. Calves arrive small, at about 15 kg, and heifers can be bred from about two years of age.

Related breeds and crosses

Closest kin are regional breeds of the same corner of Europe: the Gurgucke, Lekbibaj and Prespa in Albania, the Gacko, also written Gatacko, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Metohija Red in Kosovo, the Greek Shorthorn in Greece, and the Rhodope Shorthorn, called the Rodopi, in Bulgaria. Turkey's Anatolian Black is a more distant cousin, carrying a strain of zebu ancestry.

Numbers, conservation and the herd book

In its 2007 world assessment the FAO classed the Buša as not at risk. The name covers either a single breed or a cluster of sister breeds, and the local variants differ from country to country in size, colour and performance. Until about the mid-twentieth century these were the prevailing cows of the Balkans, the standard stock of village households across the peninsula, and each regional type still carries its own name.

From the Buša

Questions people ask about Buša

Good reading and sources

• Buša on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data