Golden cattle for the bushveld

This article showed that a carefully selected new crossbreed offered sound advantages for extensive ranching in harsh areas.

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The dream of every cattleman is to find, or better still, produce an animal that will give top production at the lowest cost, with virtually no attention. Way up in the bushveld, in the sweltering heat of the Phalaborwa area [in what is today Limpopo], there is a farmer who believes he has succeeded in doing just that by producing what he calls Huguenot cattle. Danie Laubscher, manager of Croc Ranch at Gravelotte, together with his employer, Dennis Solomon, has spent more than 25 years perfecting a cross between the Charolais and Afrikaner that is able to thrive under the worst conditions to be found in the region.

Laubscher says that from the outset they applied the strictest selection and crossbreeding standards, and now they have a stable breed made up of 60% Charolais and 40% Afrikaner.