La Reina

What do La Reina cattle look like?

La Reina is a Nicaraguan local breed of the Creole type, descended from Bos taurus stock. Its coat is red, described as sorrel, and the hair is slick and close-lying, which helps the animal cope with tropical heat. Birth weights average 27.8 kg. The breed serves three jobs at once, giving milk, meat and work. Age at first calving averages 37.4 months and the calving interval 14.0 months, though these figures vary a great deal between herds.

Where does the La Reina come from?

Cattle of Spanish origin reached the Americas in the 15th century, and their descendants became the Creole stock of Central America. La Reina took shape in the 1950s, when two Nicaraguan breeders, Joaquin Reyna and Costantino Sacasa Carazo, built up a herd of roughly 200 females showing the usual Creole traits. The breed carries Joaquin Reyna's name. Breeding choices favoured a red (sorrel) coat together with milk yield. Nicaragua's government began compiling an official inventory during the 1970s; in 1988 the breed was named national patrimony, and a genetic improvement programme was agreed with the Universidad Nacional Agraria.

What the La Reina is known for

Heat is the main challenge the breed answers well. Its slick, short hair and the genes behind it give the animals tolerance of high temperatures, which suits the tropics of Nicaragua. Milk yield varies widely between herds and between years, and the figures suggest that better management and breeding could raise output. Recording has shown that management differs a lot from one herd to another, and that crossbred cows of commercial dairy breeds have outyielded La Reina animals kept in the same conditions.

How the La Reina is bred and kept

Breeding advice for La Reina centres on recording. Pedigrees, calving dates and milk figures are to be logged so that choices rest on data. The proposal is to keep every female in the herd rather than cull them, to draw up mating plans, and to avoid pairing close relatives. Young bulls chosen from cows with good milk records and short calving intervals would serve for one or two years each, then be replaced, which keeps generations short and limits inbreeding. Heritability estimates for the traits measured have been low to moderate, and results differ greatly from herd to herd.

What the La Reina is kept for

La Reina is a triple-purpose breed, and Nicaraguan farming uses it for milk, beef and draught work. In the recorded herds, 534 cows produced 1,750 lactations with an average yield of 1,319 kg, though the spread between herds and between periods was wide. The breed can give as much as 7,000 pounds of milk when fed on forage alone. Test-day samples of milk yield, fat and protein were taken each month for a year across three La Reina herds and two herds of crossbred cows; the commercial dairy crosses gave more milk, but the herds also differed in how they were managed, so the comparison is not straightforward.

The land and climate of the La Reina

The breed belongs to the tropical country of Nicaragua, where high temperatures and forage-based feeding are the norm. Its slick coat and the heat-tolerance genes that go with it let the animals graze through hot weather better than breeds built for cooler climates. The cows are kept on pasture and produce milk from forage, without heavy concentrate feeding. Wide differences in performance between herds point to management, rather than climate alone, as the thing that decides how well the animals do.

Who keeps the La Reina

The breed is bound up with two Nicaraguan breeders, Joaquin Reyna and Costantino Sacasa Carazo, who assembled the founding herd in the 1950s. Their work passed into national hands when the government took an interest in the stock and later gave it protected status. Today the purebred females are held in a handful of herds, and the breed is described as part of Nicaraguan agrarian culture. Its keepers are farmers who want milk, meat and a working ox from the same animals, in conditions where heat and grazing are the main constraints.

Keeping La Reina cattle

Keeping La Reina cows is mostly a grazing job. The herds run on forage and can still milk well without much bought-in feed. Management differs sharply between farms, and that shows up in the milk records. Recording schemes for calving dates, milk yield and ancestry are recommended, so that the best cows can be picked out and used as the mothers of the next bulls.

Related breeds and crosses

La Reina belongs to the Creole group, the cattle descended from Iberian stock carried to the Americas, and is sometimes simply called Creole cattle. Crosses with commercial dairy breeds have been made in Nicaragua and were compared with purebred La Reina herds in the milk-recording work. In those trials the crossbred cows gave the most milk, while purebred La Reina cows gave the least, though the herds were managed differently from one another.

Numbers, conservation and the herd book

The purebred population is small. Five herds hold something like 650 females, counting calves, heifers and milking cows, and the four herds with usable records account for 285 cows. Nicaragua's government began listing the animals in the 1970s, and in 1988 gave the breed the status of national patrimony. Breeding work continues under an agreement with the Universidad Nacional Agraria, and the herd records form the basis for future selection.

Questions people ask about La Reina

Good reading and sources

• La Reina cattle on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data