Nineteen Nadudana Cattle (5 bulls and 14 cows) were first imported into Australia, from the USA, in 1995. A group of early breeders interested in promoting the breed and maintaining a mutual body for breeders to maintain contact, formed as The Nadudana Cattle Society of Australia Inc. in July 1995. Nadudana Cattle Queensland formed as a spin off group of owners in Queensland early in 2007. Subsequently the Nadudana Cattle Society of Australia Inc. foundered and, with new breeders taking up the breed interstate, by 2020 it was clear that Nadudana Cattle Queensland had become the de facto national association. It was thus decided to relaunch the Association in 2022 as Nadudana Association Australia (NAA).
The NAA is aware that, at its relaunch, there were relatively few breeders who were regularly registering cattle, and thus the number of registered cattle has been declining. The maintenance of a registry of cattle through a formal association is critical to the survival of any rare breed and is the only realistic mechanism whereby the national status of a rare breed can be assessed. The Rare Breeds Trust of Australia currently classifies Nadudana in its Critical Red Category meaning that there are less than 150 breeding females and less than 25 annual registrations. NAA agrees with this categorisation. At the time of its relaunch in 2022 the number of breeding females was unknown, but certainly the number was likely to be considerably less than 150 and annual registrations had fallen well below 25. It is also known that there were significant numbers of cattle considered by their breeders to be pure Nadudana but they could not be registered due to missing information on their pedigrees. It is one goal of NAA to bring new members into the Association and conduct an inventory of the number of registered and unregistered Nadudana currently in Australia.
The registration system of 2022 required that an application for registration must include a full pedigree demonstrating ‘purity’ of breeding and a DNA test to prove parentage. The NAA has adopted an additional, more flexible registration system that enables owners to apply for appearance certification so that we may create an appendix registry of animals that are considered to meet a certain minimum adherence to the Nadudana standard, even when breeding records are missing. Breeders may then upgrade their herds by mating these appendix registered animals with fully registered pedigreed Nadudana to build up the national herd.
We are now (2026) in the final stage of re-launching the Main Registry for Purebred and Foundation Pure Nadudana, and taking applications for cattle registrations.
We are also in the process of finalising our new Appendix Registry and instating a Grading Committee to enable us to register potentially pure Nadudana that may have had their lineage information lost over the years, and crossbred cattle for grading up.