Maraîchine

The coat ranges from light to grayish wheat, with black mucosa. It closely resembles the Nantaise and Parthenaise, two breeds also descended from the cattle that have populated western France for centuries.

The Maraîchine is renowned for its milk production and adaptation to wetlands. After WWII, it almost became extinct due to the specialization of breeds. However, the breed was saved in the 1980s through a group of friends and L'Institut de l'élevage, who reconstituted it from various animals scattered in the animal husbandry. And today, as a result of the breed's conservation program, numbers are on the rise.

History

The Maraîchine forms a part of the large population – sometimes called Poitevine or Vendéenne – of wheaten-coloured cattle which traditionally occupied the western part of France, from the foothills of the Massif Central in the east to the eastern Morbihan in the west. It is closely related to the Parthenaise, the Nantaise and the extinct Marchoise and Berrichonne, all of which belong to the same group. Oxen of this type were used mainly for agricultural draught work in Haut-Poitou, in the Saintonge, in Touraine and in the Vendée. The cattle were sometimes called Gâtinaises or Boeufs de Gâtine, so named for the Gâtine Vendéenne. At the end of their working lives, these oxen were often sent to the area of Cholet to be fattened for slaughter, and then were known as 'Choletaises'.

The Maraîchine originates in the Marais Poitevin and other marshlands that lie between the estuaries of the Loire and the Gironde. It may have received some influence from Dutch cattle brought to the area in the early seventeenth century by workers from the Low Countries brought to the area by Humphrey Bradley, the English land drainage engineer who was maître des digues du royaume or 'master of dykes of the Kingdom' and had contracted to drain parts of the Marais de Saintonge.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, many vineyards in western France were destroyed by phylloxera and uprooted; the land was turned to pasture. A number of dairy co-operatives were formed, and milk from the Maraîchine and the Parthenaise was used to produce a local type of butter, the Beurre Charentes-Poitou, which quickly became well known.

In the early twentieth century, breeders of the Maraîchine made extensive use of Parthenaise bulls, in the hope of increasing growth rates and achieving lighter bone structure while still maintaining dairy qualities.

In 1971 the decision was taken to breed the Parthenaise for beef production only. In 2000 it was agreed that the criterion for distinguishing the modern Parthenaise from the more traditional Maraîchine would be the bulls used for reproduction: offspring of bulls born later than Joli-Coeur (born in 1974) would be considered Parthenaises, while offspring of older bulls, of which stocks of semen were still held, could be considered Maraîchines. A genetic study in 2004 found Joli-Coeur and all approved Parthenais bulls born after him to be homozygous for the mh double-muscling gene, while bulls used in Maraîchine breeding were heterozygous or homozygous recessive. The Maraîchine thus represents a traditional form of the Parthenaise.

A renewed interest in the breed

In 1986, three friends decided to reconstitute a herd of Maraîchine cows. They received support from the Livestock Institute, which listed the existing Maraîchine cows.

In 1987, when a farmer with a herd of Parthenaise-Maraîchine cows with good milk production decided to sell his livestock, the Ecomuseum of Daviaud bought the two best cows, while the trio of friends bought the rest of the herd.

In 1988, the Association pour la valorisation de la race bovine maraîchine et des prairies humides (“Association for the valorisation of the Maraichine breed and wet meadows” in English) was founded, and with the support of the General Council of Vendée, purchased the first four bulls of the breed. Between 1989 and 1991, the association bought around 50 cows. From this base, many females were placed on various farms in the region. This led to the creation of a conservatory in Nalliers, where animals were entrusted to the Luçon-Pétré Agricultural College and subsequently to private individuals. In 1986, there were only thirty animals, but by 2004 the number had risen to 1,500, including 534 cows and 60 breeding bulls.