Senepol

What do Senepol cattle look like?

The Senepol is a beef breed with no horns and a short coat. Its colour is usually solid red, though black and brown animals also occur, and red has long been the favoured shade. Behind the breed lie four strands: Red Poll, N'Dama, Criola and a small amount of Zebu, a mixture later confirmed by genetic work. Senepol cattle are calm to handle, give good meat and milk well, and they carry the Caribbean's tolerance of heat and insects.

Where does the Senepol come from?

N'Dama cattle, a small breed from West Africa, reached St Croix in 1860, when George Elliot shipped sixty young females and two bulls over from Senegal. That group began the island's N'Dama herd. By 1889 Henry C. Nelthropp was running one of its largest herds at the Granard Estates, with 250 purebred animals. In 1918 his son Bromley brought in a Red Poll bull from Trinidad, an animal of English descent, hoping to lift milk yields and lose the long horns; two of that bull's sons were used as sires. A second Red Poll bull arrived from St Thomas in 1942, with two purebred Red Poll cows reared locally. Breeders settled on the name Senepol in 1954, and a registry appeared in the late 1960s.

What the Senepol is known for

Senepol are calm to handle and stand up well to tropical heat and biting insects. The USDA has reported that they produce a stronger immune response than several other beef breeds. That may come from the small amount of Zebu blood in the breed, and it is helped by generations of natural selection on St Croix, where only animals suited to the climate did well. Breeders also chose deliberately for animals that were hornless, solid red and comfortable in the heat.

How the Senepol is bred and kept

The island breeders selected for three things: a solid red coat, natural hornlessness and heat tolerance. The animals that resulted were passed out to four main herds on St Croix. In the 1950s, when sugar cane was becoming less profitable, the USDA paid for scientific breeding of the Nelthropp Senepol under Richard Marshall Bond. With USDA help, the College of the Virgin Islands Extension Service started assessing the animals' performance on farm in 1976. Modern SNP genotyping has since mapped the breed's mixed ancestry in detail.

What the Senepol is kept for

Beef is the main product. The Red Poll side of the family gives good meat and a fair milk yield, so some herds also milk their cows. In 1977 twenty-two cows were taken to the United States, and herds have since grown through the southern states, where heat and parasites are hard on European breeds. Other countries have taken the breed up for the same reasons, among them Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, plus Australia, South Africa and the Philippines.

The land and climate of the Senepol

St Croix is hot, and the breed was made there. Animals that could not cope with sun and insects did not last, so the climate itself did much of the selecting. Senepol cattle are now kept in warm parts of the world far from the island, including Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, the southern United States, Australia, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and the Philippines. A short coat and a tolerance of parasites suit this kind of country.

Who keeps the Senepol

Senepol history centres on one island family. Henry C. Nelthropp and later his son Bromley kept the herd at the Granard Estates on St Croix, and the USDA scientist Richard Marshall Bond worked on their breeding programme. George Elliot had brought the first West African cattle to the island. Today more than 500 breeders keep the breed, with breed societies in the United States, Australia and South Africa. For genetic study, samples were gathered from Senepol in four regions of Venezuela.

Keeping Senepol cattle

Senepol are handled easily, which is one reason the breed spread on tropical farms. The coat is short, and the animals were selected over many generations for tolerance of heat and insects. USDA work found a stronger immune response in Senepol than in other beef breeds, thought to come partly from the Zebu share of their ancestry and partly from natural selection on St Croix. On-farm performance testing, begun in 1976, is used to judge stock.

Related breeds and crosses

The breed mixes four strands: Red Poll from England, N'Dama from West Africa, Criola from the Caribbean and a little Zebu. Testing cattle from Venezuela with SNP markers put European taurine ancestry at about 89 per cent on average, Zebu at about 10 per cent and African taurine, the group that includes N'Dama, at well under one per cent. Older accounts treated the Senepol as simply a N'Dama and Red Poll cross; the genetic work shows a wider set of ancestors.

Numbers, conservation and the herd book

Registered Senepol now number more than 14,000, held by over 500 breeders, and a breed registry has existed since the late 1960s. Twenty-two cows left for the United States in 1977; the breed has since spread in the southern states and abroad. Herds are reported in Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, Australia, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe. No conservation ranking is given for the breed.

Questions people ask about Senepol

Good reading and sources

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