Long horned cows

From mountain gorillas to lions,from elephants to shoe bills, Uganda is blessed with more than it’s fair share of impressive wild beasties. But it is also the major stronghold for what is unquestionably the most imposing of Africa’s domestic creatures; the remarkably long horned breed of cattle associated with various pastoralists most specifically the Ankole tribe.

 Their cattle comes in several colours ranging from uniform rusty yellow to blotched black and white, but their preposterous monstrous horns which grow from either side of the head like inverted elephant tusks. Cattle keeping is as deeply bound as a lifestyle.

In past times, unlike the Maasai whose  diet was not as might be expected centered on meat but rather on blood tapped from the vein of a living cow combined with a relatively meagre yield of milk, the Ankole viewed cattle as close to family so that slaughtering a cow for meat was regarded as akin to cannibalism but it was customary for infertile cows to be slaughtered for meat.