Furie and Cigale eye each other warily, take a step forward and lock horns.
It’s an ancient ritual, one that plays out each summer high in the Swiss Alps, as cows battle to be queen and villagers come to watch.
Judges record every fight as spectators sit on the surrounding mountainside, sipping local wines and cheering their family herd.
TRADITION
But it is the cows who choose whom to fight and who will reign supreme at the end of the season.
“They’ve been doing this ever since my grandparents were young, and even before that,” says Marthe Vianin, once the proud owner of several fighting cows. “It’s hundreds of years old.”
Vianin, in her sixties, has come to watch her son’s two cows — Tzardon and Bamby — take on champions from other herds.
Down in the corral, Bergamote faces off a challenge from Berkane with a fierce stare and a tussle of horns. No harm done. Still, there are clearly some seasoned fighters in this contest, judging from the scars they bear from past battles.
Locals insist the bovine power-struggle is both humane and irrepressible.
“It’s very rare for them to hurt themselves,” Vianin said.
The fighting season starts in early June, when cows are taken up to pastures 2,700m high and encounter rival herds. What follows are a hundred days of grazing on lush Alpine meadows — and lots of fighting.
HERENS BREED
Black, with short legs and built more like bulls than cows, the Herens breed found in the southern canton of Valais is naturally competitive and will always establish their own hierarchy.
Natural leaders distinguish themselves in battle, where strength and determination are key.
In the fall, the herds’ return to the valley is marked by a celebration. Owners decorate their cows with flowers and giant bells and they parade through the village, led, of course, by the queen.
“It’s a beautiful thing to see,” says Trisha Cochrane from London, who owns a vacation home in the village of Grimentz.
There is no prize money for the winner, but owners can fetch a handsome price — up to US$30,000 — if they choose to sell a queen.
Most important, local Albert Salamin said, is the respect.
The winner’s owner is “king of the village for the year. He’s more respected than the mayor,” Salamin says to laughs from bystanders.
The Salamin brothers have several cows in competition, but Albert admits only his brother Armand’s prize heifer Bolero stands a real chance this year.
JUST FOR FUN
Cow fighting is still taken seriously, but it’s largely a hobby and a cherished tradition for most villagers, who have long since stopped living off the land.
Four-wheel drive cars and all-year tourism have changed life in these remote Alpine valleys, bringing prosperity and making cattle-rearing less appealing to a younger generation.
“Even 40 years ago, most families got much of what they needed from three or four cows,” Salamin said. “Milk, cheese, meat, the cows provided it all.”
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
RSS