Tropentag, September 14 - 16, 2010 in Zurich "World Food System – A Contribution from Europe"

Traditional Art Contest of Sonok as an Alternative for Selection of Good Quality of Madura Cattle

¹Wageningen University, Department of Animal Science, Animal Production Systems Group, The Netherlands
²Gadjah Mada University, Laboratory of Animal Breeding, Indonesia

Abstract

Madura cattle is one of the prominent local cattle breeds in Indonesia; probably formed from Bali, Ongole and Bos taurus cattle. The uniformity of this breed was developed from tuft selection of Madura people. Madura cattle are embedded in cultural activities of the Madura people. One of the cultural events involving Madura cattle is Sonok contest, which are pairs of good female, driven by a jockey, have to walk in 25 metres of line and reach a finish line which is designed like a gate, and step their forefeet perfectly and cohesively. This contest is traditionally aimed to select good heifers and cows. Cultural practices in keeping Sonok cattle and criteria applied to select them, can be used for conservation of Madura cattle. The aim of this study was to explore phenotypic characteristics of Sonok cattle among different age groups.
In total 166 heads of Sonok cattle divided into 6 age groups were observed for body colour, existence of dewlap, hump, smear colour around eyes, mouth and legs, and existence of the coloured back line. In total 106 heads of Sonok heifers and cows were observed for their body condition score (BCS).
Most Sonok cattle in all of age groups are dark brown (64 %), have medium dewlap (66 %) and small hump (61 %), non specific smear colour around eyes (55 %) and mouth (52 %), and on legs (58 %), and no coloured back line (55 %). It seems that Madura cattle characteristics are a combination of the characteristics of Bali and Ongole cattle. These characteristics have been used by farmers as traditional selection criteria through the Sonok contest. Almost all Sonok heifers and cows had good body condition score (98.1 %). By applying traditional selection, Madura people have been maintaining the phenotype uniformities of this breed for hundreds of years. This might be valuable and contributing to conservation of Madura cattle.

Keywords: Madura cattle, phenotype uniformity, Sonok, traditional selection

Contact Address: Tri Satya Mastuti Widi, Wageningen University, Department of Animal Science, Animal Production Systems Group, Wageningen, The Netherlands, e-mail: widi_tsmyahoo.com