breed reported in geographic location
Mertolenga, Portugal (Cattle)
https://github.com/monarch-initiative/vertebrate-breed-ontology/issues/180
https://www.fao.org/dad-is
The concept of “breed reported in geographic location by FAO National Coordinators” is unique to DAD-IS (https://www.fao.org/dad-is/en/). This VBO term should therefore be used specifically for the breed conforming to this concept.
For Bernardo Lima (1873), a small "alentejano", well adapted to the hills of lean pastures and hard loads. Hard to carry and to plough in the hillsides and saws and producing the best ox of halter. It exists in Baixo Alentejo, in the lands of Mértola, Alcoutim and Martinlongo. As a halter ox it was taken to the care of wild cattle in the region of Ribatejo. It was a unicoloured Mertolengo, with a more “retinta” color, without meshes and with spiral horns. Professor Paula Nogueira (quoted by Isaías Vaz, 1987) states that in Baixo Alentejo, the oxen are less corpulent and in the region of Mértola, cut by the Guadiana, there is a variety called Mertolenga, composed of animals with little body and rather cherry or brown color, whose shapes make the transition of the Alentejo cattle to the Algarve cattle. Teófilo Frazão (1961), states that the real Mertolengo was that bovine adapted for its smallness and hardness to the rough, montuous, quite folded and scarce in forage lands of Mértola and Alcoutim, which coincided with the variety mentioned by B. Lima. Still for T. Frazão (1961), with the franchise of the border to the cattle of the two iberian countries, for around 1900, came between them, spotted cattle that, already in the neighboring country, had fame for rusticity and good nail for the campaign of wild cattle. Some were left on the left bank of the Guadiana, others went to the fairs of Garvão and Aljustrel and from there to Ribatejo. With the need for an energetic animal for the rice areas of the Tejo, Sado and Sorraia, since the Alentejano, Mirandesa and Brava breeds, due to their nature, did not meet the requirements, the Mertolenga breed's wild red phenotype appears, with a straight profile, high hooked horns and a feisty nature. Its origin is associated with the lands of Coruche, in the first decades of the 20th century, with interference from “flavor” Charnequeiro cattle and spotted Mertolengo cattle coming from Garvão, and from there it extended its area of dispersion to the valleys of other rivers (Frazão, 1961). From the explanations given by various scholars of the Mertolenga breed directly reflect the use of the original “alentejanado” Mertolengo and the imported “Baixo Guadiana” Mertolengo, the permanence of the genetically strong white colour, giving rise to the “rosilho mil-flores” Mertolengo (which added the “ruão” component of the Mertolenga breed of cattle) and which quickly, by the combination of partial advantages of the other two types, expanded throughout the region of Serpa and Évora, and had as a place of racial solidification the Herdade da Abóboda, due to the effort of several enthusiasts and connoisseurs, of which we highlight Dr. António José Borges Bettencourt, Prof. Nuno Maria Villas Boas Potes and Dr. Isaías Monteiro Vaz. The latter as Technical Secretary of the Breed, in a phase of national turbulence, achieved the great feat of standardizing, within its specificity, the three Mertolengo’s phenotypes.
Mertolenga
VBO:0005197
Alentejana cattle (Cattle)
domestic breed
Sabrina Toro