Kiel, Germany - As the bitter chill of winter grips Europe, one of the toughest of bovine breeds, Heck cattle, are fending for themselves in the open on semi-wild pastureland in Germany. "One of them calved in the open when the temperature was 13 degrees below zero," said Heinz Hinz-Reese, 77, a co-owner of two herds totalling 70 of the hardy cattle running semi-wild on a 400-hectare landscape of hillocks and bog near the German city of Kiel.
"It was in February three years ago. From 37 degrees Celsius in the womb, the calf survived an instant drop of more than 50 degrees Celsius. Three days later, the cow and its calf walked unaided to the feeding area.
"Tell me what other mammal would be hardy enough to take that," he said proudly.
The Hecks are sometimes called reconstructed aurochs, since they were bred to resemble an extinct ox, the ancestor of the pampered modern cattle that spend Europe's winters in snug modern stables.
True aurochs became extinct in 1627, when the last documented specimen, owned by the king of Poland, died.
The breed is named after Heinz and Lutz Heck, two brothers who ran two zoos in Germany and attempted 80 years ago to replicate a giant auroch super-bull by breeding. The Nazis, who had a mania for "racial purity" of all sorts, supported the Hecks' experiments.
From a 21st century perspective, the effort was a fraud, since the authentic aurochs, which roamed Europe, North Africa and western China, is an animal defined by its DNA chemistry, not by its outward appearance.
In any case, the original purpose failed, since not even a 900- kilogram Heck bull quite equals the massive aurochs, which had a shoulder height of 1.8 metres.
The variety of breeding stock used remains evident in the highly variable colouring and stature of Heck cattle.
Some cattle in Hinz-Reese's herds are smooth-coated and others shaggy.
Taking a visitor recently on a fast bumpy ride through the terrain in an off-road vehicle, the retired farmer pointed out hairy, reddish beasts in which the genes of Scotland's hardy Galloway cattle have re- emerged.
The pride of the first herd is an enormous, barrel-chested black beast in the style of a Spanish fighting bull, with horns curved forward, just like the aurochs drawn by Stone-Age people between 15,000 and 17,000 years ago in the caves at Lascaux, France.
The Heck cattle graze a wooded river valley south of the Baltic port city of Kiel where farmland is being allowed to revert to bog. They can look after themselves year-round and only need winter feed when the vegetation dies back under the snow.
"At the moment they are just standing around, and each herd needs a bale of hay or silage every three or four days," Hinz-Reese said by telephone this week. "It was minus 11 degrees Celsius last night but they are fine.
"There are natural springs here that keep flowing even at 30 degrees minus, so they have enough to drink."
The bog at the headwaters of the Eider, a river flowing into the North Sea, was drained in the 1950s to create grazing land and is now being allowed to revert to a semi-wild state as a leisure-walking area.
Heck cattle have come into favour at nature reserves in Germany and the Netherlands as helpers in keeping down thistles, nettles and scrub. This encourages flora diversity on non-forest land.
Vandals are also intimidated by the cattle, and Hinz-Reese says a kicking by the big beasts can teach a yapping dog a fatal lesson.
The cattle share the grazing reserve with 18 wild Konik ponies, a fierce equine breed that also fends for itself in mid-winter.
"Aurochs" meat commands a premium price. The last real aurochs before extinction were reserved to be hunted by kings. In Germany, organic-oriented gourmets favour Heck beef in the belief that it comes from "happy" cows that have never been tamed.
A village butcher slaughters the cattle and turns them into steaks and other fine cuts.
"The gourmet restaurants are always eager to buy it," said Hinz- Reese. In the next few weeks, he plans to introduce a new delicacy, aurochs sausage, made from the off-cuts.
Hinz-Reese, whose family has farmed at Reesdorf for many generations, was chairman from 1974 of the local drainage board, which had overseen the drainage of the peat-land and a straightening of the Eider in the 1950s and 1960s.
In a decade of retirement, he has supervised the reverse project, with the board and a nature foundation gradually buying up or leasing the farmland, allowing moisture to accumulate in it again and allowing the Eider to revert to its old meander.
The state of Schleswig-Holstein, which imposes fines for environmental damage at other locations, has turned over some of the fines income to the board to fund the land purchases.
The board now owns 120 hectares, a trust owns 120 hectares and the rest is leased from farmers including Hinz-Reese's relations. The project is also assisted by state ecology authorities and academics at the nearby University of Kiel.
Last year, the Eider grazing reserve, set up 11 years ago, was registered with the European Union as a flora-and-fauna habitat, a special status for semi-natural areas created from former farmland.
The decision to leave the peat-land in grass, and not plant trees on it, comes from a realization that primeval Europe was not uniformly forested, but was a mixed landscape where the aurochs and its mammal relatives, the buffalo and visent, grazed.
Herds of Heck cattle are also common in Bavaria state and Germany's central highlands. A breeding association formed by about 100 wealthy enthusiasts keeps trying to refine the blood line, but Hinz-Reese just regards the breed with a practical farmer's eye.
"They are Nature's own landscape gardeners," he said.
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