No two Holstein cows share exactly the same black and white pattern
The piebald gene lays down Holstein patches at random, so every cow's coat is unique. Some are red and white, rare ones mix black and red, and a few look bluish where white hairs mingle with black. Behind the famous markings sits the dominant breed of industrial dairying, farmed in more than 160 countries.
The breed's roots lie along the North Sea coast from North Holland to Schleswig-Holstein. Around 100 BC a group from Hesse settled near the Frisii with black cattle, while Frisian cattle were described as pure white or pale, and crossing may have founded the modern type. The Frisii preferred herding to war and paid Rome in ox hides and horns. Between the 13th and 16th centuries the Dutch polders turned out enormous quantities of butter and cheese.
The names now mean different things. Holstein refers to North and South American bloodlines, Friesian to traditional European black-and-whites bred for both milk and meat, and crosses are called Holstein-Friesian. Dutch settlers probably brought black and white cattle to New Netherland between 1621 and 1664. The first recorded import, six cows and two bulls, arrived in 1795 through the Holland Land Company, and Winthrop W. Chenery achieved a lasting herd with his third shipment in 1861, after government officials destroyed his earlier animals over contagious disease. Europe eventually stopped exporting dairy cattle for disease reasons.
The cows are big producers. A mature animal weighs about 680 to 770 kg and averages some 10,220 kg of milk a year, around 3.7 percent butterfat. In the UK, pedigree animals average roughly 8,125 litres a year over about 3.4 lactations. A 2005 survey found Holstein ancestry in 61 percent of the country's 3.47 million dairy cattle.
Intensive selection has costs. A 2004 study in the Journal of Dairy Science found that 96 to 98 percent of UK Holsteins were inbred to some degree, up from around 50 percent in 1990. In Britain, the pure Holstein society began in 1946 and merged with the Friesian society in 1999 to form Holstein UK.
Source: Holstein Friesian
