Maraîchine

What do Maraîchine cattle look like?

The Maraîchine is a big framed beef breed. A cow reaches roughly 140 cm at the withers, the ridge between the shoulders, and about 700 kg; a bull stands near 145 cm and can weigh 1,200 kg. The coat runs from pale wheat to a greyer wheat, and the mucous membranes, the soft skin around the muzzle and eyes, are black. Horns grow in a lyre shape, sweeping outward with the tips turned in, on cows and bulls alike, and they are not as straight as the Nantaise's. Culards, animals carrying the double-muscling trait, are not accepted in the breed; the Parthenaise does accept them. Bulls are taller and heavier than cows, and the head is shaped a little differently from the Nantaise.

Where does the Maraîchine come from?

The breed takes its name from the Marais Poitevin, the marshland on the Atlantic coast of the Vendée in western France. It belongs to a wide body of wheaten cattle once kept across the west of the country, from the edge of the Massif Central to eastern Morbihan, sometimes called Poitevine or Vendéenne. Its near kin are the Parthenaise and the Nantaise, and the Marchoise and Berrichonne, both now gone. Oxen of this kind pulled ploughs and carts in Haut-Poitou, the Saintonge, Touraine and the Vendée, and were sometimes known as Gâtinaises or Boeufs de Gâtine. Early in the seventeenth century, Dutch cattle brought over by workers under the drainage engineer Humphrey Bradley may have left some mark on the marsh herds.

What the Maraîchine is known for

Hardiness is what the breed is known for. It resists disease and parasites well, lives a long time and calves readily and often. Wet meadows, with the plants that grow in them, suit it best, and it copes with the swing between dry spells and heavy moisture that a sub-humid marsh goes through. Breeders treat it as a mixed-purpose animal, useful for more than one job.

How the Maraîchine is bred and kept

Breeders in the western marshes have long chosen animals that do well on wet ground, and that selection gave the breed its character. A herd book came in 1988, backed by the Marais Poitevin Regional Nature Park, renamed the Regional Nature Park in 2014. Under a technical conservation group that includes the breed association, the Livestock Institute and INRA, young bulls are bought and kept at a breeding station on a member's farm. Semen from 28 bulls is held for artificial insemination, and inbreeding among the cows stands near 1.8 per cent, low for a small population.

What the Maraîchine is kept for

Beef is the chief use today. The carcase is good quality, taken largely from steers of about three years old and from calves still at the udder. Milk now goes almost entirely to rearing calves, and in 2004 only one farm was milking for sale. That was not always so: a cow once gave about 5,000 kg in a lactation, and this milk built the reputation of Charente-Poitou butter, made in co-operatives from Maraîchine and Parthenaise milk. The breed also worked, as oxen of this type did in Haut-Poitou, the Saintonge, Touraine and the Vendée.

The land and climate of the Maraîchine

These are cattle of the Atlantic marshes of western France: the Marais Poitevin, the Breton marshes, the Olonne Marshes and the damp low ground of the Saintonge. Wet meadows are their home ground, and the breed has been chosen for that ground over many generations. Damp air and soft soil suit them, and they ride out both the dry spells and the soaked spells of a sub-humid marsh.

Who keeps the Maraîchine

The breed is kept by farm families in the Vendée and the marshes nearby, usually in small herds on wet ground. In 1986 three friends set out to rebuild a herd, with help from the Livestock Institute, which drew up a list of the cows still on farms. The next year, when a farmer sold a milky herd of Parthenaise and Maraîchine cows, the museum at Daviaud chose two prime cows and the friends took the remainder. The General Council of the Vendée backed the association that followed, and pupils at the Luçon-Pétré agricultural college cared for animals at a conservatory in Nalliers.

Custom and folk tradition

Working oxen of this wheaten type were once a common sight in the west. In Haut-Poitou, the Saintonge, Touraine and the Vendée they pulled carts and ploughs. People in the Gâtine Vendéenne called them Gâtinaises, or Boeufs de Gâtine. When an ox grew old and its working days were done, it was often walked to the country around Cholet to be fattened, and then people knew it as a Choletaise. Cows once gave milk that went into the local butter of the Charentes and Poitou, and the dairy co-operatives of the later nineteenth century helped make that butter's name.

Keeping Maraîchine cattle

Feeding comes largely from wet meadow grass, the vegetation the breed has always known. Hardiness against disease and parasites means less trouble on that count, and cows stay fertile and productive over many years. Calves are reared on their mothers' milk. Young bulls pass through a conservation group's hands and then stand at a breeding station on a member's farm, returning to the owner's holding when needed. Semen is stored at an insemination centre at Saint-Symphorien.

Related breeds and crosses

The Maraîchine shares its ancestry with the Parthenaise and the Nantaise, and with the Marchoise and Berrichonne, which have vanished. Some writers treat it as a traditional form of the Parthenaise, and the two were long mixed: farmers put Parthenaise bulls to Maraîchine cows in the early twentieth century, and many herds were of Parthenaise and Maraîchine stock. The line between them was drawn in 2000 by the bulls used, with the offspring of Joli-Coeur, a bull born in 1974, counted as Parthenaise.

Numbers, conservation and the herd book

By 1986 only about thirty animals remained. Numbers climbed after the rescue: by 2004 there were some 1,500 head, among them 534 cows and 60 breeding bulls. The FAO called the breed endangered in 2007, and DAD-IS still lists it as at risk or endangered in 2024. Stored semen from four bulls of Parthenaise cross, their births in the 1960s, together with one live bull of the same cross, accounts for nearly all the ancestry of today's herd. Semen from a son of that living bull was collected at the Saint-Symphorien centre at the Livestock Institute's request.

Questions people ask about Maraîchine

Good reading and sources

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