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Jarmelista

A beef breed from the Guarda district of central Portugal, near the Serra da Estrela

The Jarmelista is a beef breed of cattle from Continental Portugal, found in the Guarda district of the central interior, near the Serra da Estrela. That district makes up the whole of its breed region, and the cattle are kept for meat.

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  • A cattle breed from Continental Portugal, in the central interior of the country
  • Its breed region is confined to the Guarda district, near the Serra da Estrela
  • Kept mainly for beef
  • Recorded in the sixth edition of Mason's World Encyclopedia of Livestock Breeds and Breeding, 2016

What do Jarmelista cattle look like?

The Jarmelista is a breed of domestic cattle from Portugal. It belongs to Continental Portugal, the mainland part of the country, and is found near the Serra da Estrela, a mountain range in the centre. The cattle are kept above all for beef: they are raised for meat. The breed's region is confined to the Guarda district, in the central interior of the country. It is one of the country's named breeds of cattle.

Where does the Jarmelista come from?

The Jarmelista comes from Continental Portugal, the mainland rather than the country's islands. It belongs to Guarda, a district in Central Portugal, in the central interior of the country and near the Serra da Estrela. That district makes up the whole of the breed's region, so the cattle are not found outside it. The breed appears in the sixth edition of Mason's World Encyclopedia of Livestock Breeds and Breeding, published in 2016.

Jarmelista, drawn

The breed drawn with a beef build, short horns. Drawn from this page, not a portrait of one animal.

What the Jarmelista is kept for

The Jarmelista is kept mainly for beef. The cattle are reared for meat, and beef is the chief purpose recorded for the breed. In cattle keeping, a beef breed is one whose main product is meat, as against a dairy breed, which is milked, or a draught breed, whose oxen pull carts and ploughs. The Jarmelista belongs in the beef group.

The land and climate of the Jarmelista

The breed is tied to one part of Portugal: the Guarda district, in the central interior of the country. This lies near the Serra da Estrela, in the centre of the country, and the district makes up the whole of the breed's region. The breed region is described as belonging to Central Portugal.

Questions people ask about Jarmelista

Where does the Jarmelista come from?

It comes from Continental Portugal, the mainland part of the country. Its breed region lies in the Guarda district, in Central Portugal, in the central interior near the Serra da Estrela, and the district is the only part of the country where the breed is found.

What is the Jarmelista kept for?

It is kept mainly for beef. The breed is classed in the beef group of cattle, which are reared for meat, and that is the purpose recorded for it.

What kind of animal is the Jarmelista?

It is a breed of domestic cattle, a named local population of Portugal. It is one of the country's cattle breeds, and it is grouped among the beef breeds.

Where is the Guarda district?

In Portugal. It lies in the central interior of the country, in the region called Central Portugal, near the Serra da Estrela, and it forms the whole of the Jarmelista breed region.

Good reading and sources

Where this page comes from

The facts on this page come from the Wikipedia article "Jarmelista", written by its contributors and used under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence, and from its Wikidata record (CC0). EveryCow rewrote the text in its own words, with AI assistance, and compares every page with the article to make sure no passage is copied. It may be reused under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 licence with a link back.

It may contain mistakes. Sizes, colours and customs differ from one herd, valley or breeder to the next. Folk beliefs are described as tradition, never as advice. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-16.

More from Portugal

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Its cousins elsewhere

All beef breeds
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Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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