Daily Maverick
Dailymaverick logo

South Africa

South Africa, Maverick Life

Brilliant beasts and super ostriches — the domestic animals that keep the Karoo ticking

Brilliant beasts and super ostriches — the domestic animals that keep the Karoo ticking
Nguni cattle are exceptionally fertile, handle heat conditions well, and are tick-resistant. (Photo: Chris Marais)
Julienne Du Toit
By Julienne Du Toit
23 Oct 2024
Facebook
1
Spend any time at all on a Karoo farm and you will encounter sheep, horses, ostriches, donkeys and perhaps an Nguni cow or six. They all have their own particular backstories and quirks.

When the friendly little Karoo town of Smithfield announced a sheep-tossing addition to its Bibber Chill Festival in the late nineties, animal rights activists everywhere rose up in arms. It seemed all the more unjust when a British study showed how clever sheep were. Published in Nature in 2001, its title was: Sheep Don’t Forget A Face by Cambridge neuroscientist Professor Keith Kendrick and four other researchers.

In fact, said scientists, sheep may even think fondly of their absent friends from time to time. Sheep-tossing sounds even more disrespectful when thinking about how much these woolly beasts have contributed to the economy of the Karoo.

The Karoo Wool Boom in the early 1950s saw huge American cars dashing across the veld, farmers’ wives in haute couture and their children in exclusive private schools.

Sheep thrive in the Karoo’s drylands, and up in the mountains of the grassy Eastern Cape. (Photo: Chris Marais)



There was also a sheep-induced gold rush. A Vosburg farmer and his dominee were, so the story goes, sitting down to Sunday lunch when they noticed something glittering in the roasted sheep’s head on the table before them.

“Gold!” they yelled. But before they quit their day jobs and began digging, someone found out the sheep had tartar, not gold, on its teeth.

True Karoo mutton remains the best in the world, as any international chef will tell you, thanks entirely to the aromatic herby plants the sheep munches all year long. Spiced on the hoof, as it were.

Incidentally, the man who won the sheep-tossing contest managed to fling the woolly beast a distance of five metres. What a mercy, then, that it was a stuffed sheep…  

Horse country


When the Kimberley diamond rush started back in 1871, one arrived there either by horse or by ox. It was still a railless, road-free era.  The quickest way to the diamond fields was via ship to Port Elizabeth. From there, you made your cumbersome way across the Great Karoo, enjoying the sights and sounds of places like Cradock, Middelburg, Graaff-Reinet and Colesberg at your leisure.

Read more: Guardians of the Vaal – Legends of grit, diamonds, and dusty reams

Each hard day’s ride would get you another 75 kilometres closer to the diamond pits of Kimberley. Each night you stabled your horses, drank a pint at a hostelry and collapsed into a rough bed.

Soon there was a good living to be made in the Karoo, breeding the draught horses, carriage horses and riding horses needed by the endless stream of traffic headed north. The trekboers who had spent a nomadic life on horseback in the Karoo were already some of the most outstanding riders in the world. 

Horses thrive in the Karoo, thanks to the high-protein grasses, rich in calcium and phosphorous. (Photo: Chris Marais)



Horses thrive in this semi-desert. The high altitude, low rainfall, and frosty winter weather resemble the Steppes and Gobi deserts, where they thrived for aeons. Also, the soils and water are remarkably high in trace minerals, especially calcium and phosphorus, which are excellent for bone formation. For decades, the Karoo was the place to breed racehorses.

Charles Southey of Culmstock near Middelburg was one of the first to bring thoroughbreds into South Africa in the late 1800s. They arrived from England by ship, swam to shore, and then walked 400 kilometres to his farm. 

The South African War and its aftermath nearly killed off the stud farms of the Karoo. But the horse traditions have returned, and the Karoo now hosts many shows and endurance rides that celebrate a man and his mount.

Karoo sock puppets


As you drive sedately through the Karoo on a sunny day, don’t be surprised to find a large and rather obsessed bird keeping pace beside you. That’s Struthio camelus, the ostrich, probably male, with telltale pink legs and an eye for the ladies in season.  

Read more: Karoo Keepsakes — Racehorse Legends, Dashing Dassies, Dancing Cranes, Sock Puppets and the Manners of Meerkats

This guy was once the golden bird of the Karoo, and his best feathers fetched fortunes on the world market as everyone with an eye for fashion just had to wear those showy plumes.

In the early 1900s, a single perfect feather would get you enough money to buy a ticket on a cruise ship from Cape Town to Europe. The industry went white-hot when word filtered down to Oudtshoorn of a Super Ostrich: the Barbary of the south Sahara. 

In the early 1900s, a single perfect feather would get you enough money to buy a ticket on a cruising ship from Cape Town to Europe. (Photo: Chris Marais)



A man called Russell Thornton was given a top-secret mission by the South African government – to find and bring back breeding stock of these fabulous creatures. What followed was vintage Hollywood: spies, secret meetings and a desert march to Timbuktu and beyond.

Eventually, they found the elusive Barbaries, captured 156 of them, and frog-marched them to a ship moored in Lagos Harbour.

Read more: The Magic Bird, a noble ostrich of the Karoo

Fortunes were made off ostrich feathers. Palaces were built. For years it looked like the good times would never end. Then World War 1 broke out, and no one had time for feathered fripperies. But the Era of the Ostrich has returned. The market has gone mad again – this time for its leather, lean meat and its feathers.

Donkeys over diesel


Some say donkeys are dumb. In fact, they are thoughtful, sensitive and handsome beasts with a highly developed sense of survival. 

Karoo donkey owners will tell you they’re obstinate, bloody-minded, calculating – and a whole lot cheaper to run in the high-tech 21st century than diesel bakkies. In fact, small-town leather crafters have reported a rise in donkey harness orders. It seems people have finally cottoned on to donkey power down on the farm. 

Karoo donkeys are obstinate, bloody-minded and calculating. Also thoughtful, handsome and sensitive. (Photo: Chris Marais)



And the donkey legends are out there, all right.

Take the story of the late Oom Kallie Gagiano of Nababeep, a dear old soul who loved his big-eared beasts so much that in the evenings he’d play the fiddle for them. They were simple old Namaqua tunes, but the donkeys seemed to like them nevertheless. 

Read more: Donkey wars and the Green Revolution

And then, in the middle of a typical Karoo drought, Grasveld the donkey and his four brothers faced starvation out in the dirt-dry countryside. Oom Kallie began staging a series of midnight raids into Nababeep. He led his donkeys into town and opened the gates of well-tended properties belonging to people he did not know (or like) well.

The beasts ran amok among the painstakingly watered gardens and gorged themselves. Until, that is, the night Grasveld got his hoof caught in an old tin while foraging in a yard. He made an awful noise escaping down the road and the homeowner woke up.

Banned from town, Oom Kallie and his donkeys returned to the veld — and their nightly fiddle jamborees…

Those lovely painted beasts


Ask a Bonsmara farmer to talk about Nguni cows and he’ll have a calf. Cattle farmers are generally very breed-loyal, and your regular Bonsmara or Tuli man will scoff at the notion of keeping Ngunis. 

“They’re light-weight show ponies,” is the common consensus.

But cross the Beef Divide to the other side and you’ll see how attached an Nguni farmer can become to his splendid cows – and vice versa. In the late afternoons, the soft sunlight plays on their many patterns as they graze out on the veld. Those hides – which make great throw-mats – are worth a few thousand apiece.

Nguni have the big advantage of being indigenous. They evolved in Ethiopia and Somalia. There are 8,000-year-old rock paintings in the Sahara Desert that depict Nguni-like cattle called Sanga. They crossed the Zambezi River between 500 and 700 AD with Nguni people migrating south. They’ve had more than 1,200 years to adapt to the environmental extremes of southern Africa. They’re exceptionally fertile, they browse well, they handle heat conditions and they’re tick-resistant.

Nguni cattle are exceptionally fertile, handle heat conditions well, and are tick-resistant. (Photo: Chris Marais)



And now they’re back in the Karoo, where their “small stock” status is of great advantage. Farmers like Schalk van der Walt of Gelykfontein outside Venterstad and Kevin Watermeyer of Zuurplaats outside Nieu-Bethesda are devoted to their Nguni herds.  They practise a form of low-stress management of the animals. Instead of harassing the cattle to move them along, they use body language to herd them. 

The unstressed beasts put on weight more easily and conceive more quickly. The more time you spend with your Ngunis – simply admiring them – the gentler they become. And a people-friendly Nguni always fetches top dollar at auction. DM



For more stories on the Karoo from Julienne du Toit and Chris Marais, try their Karoo Roads series of books, priced at R350 (landed) each.

The Karoo Quartet Special (Karoo Roads 1 – 4) consists of more than 60 Karoo stories and hundreds of black and white photographs. Priced at R960 (including taxes and courier in South Africa), this Heritage Collection can be ordered from [email protected]

Categories:

Tags: