making clay roof tiles - traditional portuguese style

It's very interesting to see that traditional method of making those tiles by hand.

One other thing that I found interesting is that those oxen are females, cows.    Most often the oxen is a castrated male, but cows and even bulls are sometimes trained to work.  Those two cows were stout and gorgeous.

The Portuguese have some wonderful cattle breeds.

Here's a photo I took in Arouca.



These are a landrace known as Arouquesa. They are triple purpose, for milk, meat and work. Which probably explains why I got away with approaching this close to them. I'm generally pretty nervous about approaching any bull, let alone a finely built one that suggests it's a dairy breed. These guys seemed pretty placid, but I decided this was close enough as the girl in background had noticed me and I didn't want to attract the attention of that boy in the front. His horns look kinda spiky and I bet he can run faster than I can!

That landrace breed is gorgeous.  To me, they look too similar to the fighting breeds for me to approach them.

They also have the aurocs look, that extinct breed of wild cattle.

We stopped for a picnic there and this one came over to see if we had any treats for her - she was really friendly!



If you look on the right hand side near the tip of her horn, you can see the two from the other photo - it looks like the bull did finally haul himself to his feet after I'd taken his photo.

And here she is making friends...



It's interesting how I interpreted their shape as 'dairy' and you interpreted it as 'fighting' or 'auroch-like'.  I guess it's that they are an old race, not developed for heavy muscling for the meat industry and we each interpreted according to our own past experiences.  Isn't there a saying about how "we see and understand things not as they are but as we are"?

You might enjoy this thread too - Rupestre - boy meets horse, ancient iberian style

Thanks for the link Burra.  I have a couple of landrace ponies, sort of.  They are BLM mustangs caught in Wyoming and Utah.  Most of us mustang owners hope our ponies have a bit of iberian blood in them.

I can see the "dairy" look in those Arouquesas too, especially the long head.  They are gorgeous animals.  Dun is one of my favorite colors.

For another one, see  

I like to watch those old ways of doing things. Too much of that is already forgotten because of 'modern technology' ...