While the Nazi party died in 1945, it seems Der Fuhrer’s cattle never quite got the message. Recently, a British farmer by the name of Derek Gow (yes, he’s well aware it rhymes with “cow”) purchased a herd of heck cattle. Heck cattle are a rare breed of cow descended from the bloodline the Nazis created during their quest to revive the long extinct super-steers, the aurochs.
Strangely, this business idea backfired when Gow realized the gigantic Nazi cows inherited their masters’ thirst to kill and conquer.
In 2009, Gow introduced 13 heck breed cows to his herd, with the hope that they would breed with his other cows. If successful, he would have been heralded as having the biggest cows in southwest England.
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The descendants of the cows used in a kooky program commissioned by the Nazis were large, but also extremely aggressive. In the 1930s, zoologist brothers Heinz and Lutz Heck bred Spanish fighting bulls with cattle from Scotland in an attempt to bring back the ancient aurochs.
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Aurochs were a large European breed that went extinct in the 1600s.
Gow never expected the cattle to share their old masters’ penchant for hate, but sure enough, they began exhibiting an aggressive nature he never before experienced in his years as a farmer.
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Although not as hung up on ethnic purity as the Nazis that raised them, the cattle would attack animals in their sightline without any prior display of threat.
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The only way Gow could get one into its pen was to use one of his farmhands as live bait, coaxing an incoming charge.
Even Gow, a passionate conservationist, agreed maybe that maybe the mighty aurochs should have stayed dead after all. He recently shipped most of his heck cattle to the slaughterhouse, keeping only the least aggressive.
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Gow says his farm is a lot more quiet now, and hopefully a little more tolerant of foreigners. Moral of the story: don’t have a cow, especially if it is a Nazi cow.
