Piedmontese cattle

The Piedmontese (Italian: Piemontese or razza bovina Piemontese) is a breed of domestic cattle that originated in the region of Piedmont, in north-west Italy. The calves are born fawn coloured, and turn grey-white as they mature. Piedmontese cattle carry a unique gene mutation identified as an inactive myostatin allele that causes hypertrophic muscle growth, or double muscling. Purebred Piedmontese cattle are homozygous, meaning they have two identical alleles present for this unique gene. They have garnered attention from breeders of beef cattle in other parts of the world, including North and South America. A small group of select Piedmontese bulls and cows were imported into Canada in the late 1970s, and into the United States in the early 1980s, and were used as the foundation breeding stock to develop a new breed of beef cattle known as North American Piedmontese cattle.

History

Until the late nineteenth century there were numerous local types of Piedmontese cattle, including the Canavese, the Della Langa, the Demonte, the Ordinario di Pianura and the Scelta di Pianura. They were triple-purpose cattle, raised principally for draught power, but valued also for meat and milk. A herd-book was opened in 1877,selective breeding towards a dual-purpose type began, and the Piedmontese became relatively uniform in character. The postpartum hypertrophic muscle growth characteristic, known as "groppa di cavallo" or "horse rump", first appeared in 1886 in the comune of Guarene d'Alba. It was not in accordance with the then breed standard, and only later attracted the interest of breeders and scientists.

Piedmontese language

Piedmontese (piemontèis or lenga piemontèisa) is a Romance language spoken by over 1 million people in Piedmont, northwest Italy. It is geographically and linguistically included in the Northern Italian group (with Lombard, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Ligurian, and Venetian). It is part of the wider western group of Romance languages, including French, Occitan, and Catalan.

Many European and North American linguists (e.g. Einar Haugen, Gianrenzo P. Clivio, Hans Göbl, Helmut Lüdtke, George Bossong, Klaus Bochmann, Karl Gebhardt, and Guiu Sobiela Caanitz) acknowledge Piedmontese as an independent language, though in Italy it is often still considered a dialect; on the other hand, in the Italian context, dialetto 'dialect' refers to an indigenous language, not to a variety of Italian. Today it has a certain official status recognized by the Piedmont regional government, but not by the national government.

Piedmontese was the first language of emigrants who, in the period from 1850 to 1950, left Piedmont for countries such as France, Brazil, the United States, Argentina, and Uruguay.

Piedmontese (disambiguation)

Piedmontese may indicate:

See also