In 1985, after her third pregnancy resulted in a worrying proliferation of glandular tissue, veterinary surgeons extracted some of her eggs to freeze for future research. Her food was even tested on other cows before she was given it, lest some assassin should try to poison her. She was kept in an air conditioned stable and had a regular staff on hand to make sure she was comfortable, going so far as to play soothing music during milking. Ubre Blanca was lionised in the Cuban media – they even put her on a stamp.īeing the supercow, Ubre Blanca was treated like royalty. This proved to be a great propaganda piece, evidence of the efficiency of the communist system and a slap in the face for America. Castro was thrilled, and not entirely without reason, as Ubre Blanca was producing four times as much milk as a regular cow every day. Born in 1972, Ubre Blanca was a milk machine, breaking the world record in 1982 when she produced 109.5 litres of milk in a single day, and then set another record when it was calculated she had yielded 24,269 litres over a 305-day lactation cycle. Ubre Blanca, which means White Udder in Spanish, was the only success story of the breeding program. Of the million supercows Castro had hoped for, they managed to breed a grand total of…one. It was a grand vision, but one with mixed results. If in 1970 we have approximately 400,000 cows, in 1971, they will multiply to nearly one million more.” You might call it…(drum roll, please)…cowmunism. “It means that these cows will bear calves in 1967. “It means that a Cebu cow which produces 1.5 litres of milk can bear a calf that can produce 8 or 10 litres,” he explained in the 1966 speech announcing his new breeding program. So Castro told his scientists to create his supercow, using artificial insemination to combine the hardiness of the Cebu with the high yields of the Holstein.
Unfortunately, the Cuban bovine population wasn’t exactly up to the task, historically having been bred for meat, with milk not being a huge part of the Cuban diet. Cuba at that time was suffering from food shortages, and Castro became convinced that a herd of supercows that could produce huge quantities of milk would be the answer. Which is exactly what Castro did in the 1960s. However, most people aren’t unquestioned demagogues of a country with an agrarian economy who can command their top scientists to breed a new species of cow that will produce four times the amount of milk as a normal cow. He also almost caused a falling out with the French by demanding that their ambassador say Cuban cheese was better than camembert, which reportedly ended with the ambassador banging the table and shouting “never!” (the French are sensitive about their cheese). He was so famed for it that the CIA once attempted to poison his milkshake. The thing is that Fidel Castro loved dairy. While less inclined to mass murder than many other dictators, he was still an autocrat, and, like most autocratic leaders, he had a grand vision that he wanted to achieve for his country. For another, and, perhaps more notably, she was a cow.įidel Castro is one of history’s more polarising leaders. For one thing, she was female, a tough position in patriarchal Cuba. Ubre Blanca was an unusual revolutionary. But this is not a monument to Che Guevara or Fidel Castro no, this is a statue of Ubre Blanca. In the city of Nueva Gerona there stands a white stone statue of one of the most beloved Cuban revolutionaries, whose legacy lives on to this day.
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