Aosta Chestnut
red-pied cattle breed of the Aosta Valley
The Aosta Chestnut (Italian: Valdostana Castana, French: Valdostaine châtaine) is an Italian breed of cattle from Aosta Valley region in north-western Italy. It is one of three regional breeds in the area, the others being the Aosta Black Pied and the Aosta Red Pied. The Aosta Chestnut ranges in colour from chestnut-brown to black. It derives from cross-breeding of imported Hérens stock with the local Black Pied cattle. While the Aosta Chestnut is raised both for meat and for milk, its principal characteristic is its ability in the Bataille de Reines, the annual cow-fighting contests held in the region. Partly due to its combative nature, it is not suited to intensive farming, and management is normally transhumant: the cattle are stabled only in winter, and spend the summer months on the mountain pastures of the Alps.
History
The Aosta Chestnut is a relatively recent breed; only black-pied and red-pied cattle are documented in the Aosta Valley in texts of the early twentieth century. Despite the strict regulations governing the herd-book for the Aosta Black Pied, breeders introduced imported Hérens blood. The Chestnut was officially recognised by the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forests in 1985. It is registered in the herd-book of the Black Pied, and is considered to differ from it only in the colour of the coat.
The public source identifies “Aosta Chestnut” as red-pied cattle breed of the Aosta Valley. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Aosta, Chestnut and red-pied.
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This entry incorporates text from “Aosta Chestnut” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.