Raramuri Criollo cattle: five centuries in the Sierra Tarahumara, and a desert experiment in New Mexico

Cattle of Spanish colonial descent that the Raramuri of the Sierra Tarahumara kept for roughly five hundred years with almost no managed breeding. In 2005 three bulls and thirty heifers went to a USDA research range in New Mexico, to test whether an unimproved landrace outperforms commercial breeds on hot arid rangeland. Genomics published in 2025 confirms the predominantly Iberian ancestry - and measures how narrow the introduced herd's base has become.