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Ranching has been an important sector for Darakuta Ranch since the days of David Read  and remained so when the Bapst family took over the Ranch 1986.

After an intial trial with dairy cows, it quickly became clear that Darakuta's environment is not suited for just any cows.  In addition to various vector-borne diseases, like east coast fever, anaplasmosis, heartwater, and other infectious diseases, trypanosomosis transmitted by the Tsetse Fly posed a considerable challenge. Difficult dry and wet seasons  didn't make things easier. Purebreed dairy cows aren't resilient to these conditions and diseases, and struggled greatly.

The remote location of Darakuta Ranch, the logistics of a cooling chain and unreliable roads especially in the rainy season posed a further problem for the dairy business.

A new start with local Zebu cows and a shift to beef steer and breeding bulls provided the solution. The Zebu were small in size and didn’t have a lot of kilos, but were extremely resilient. 

By working with widespread tse-tse traps and dipping the cows with a drug that would kill the tsetse fly when it ingested blood from a cow, the tse-tse was successfully eradicated from Darakuta within 15 years. 

At the same time the Zebu were cross-bred with other, larger breeds such as the Boran and Swiss Brown to create robust cattle with a larger size, resulting in the breed that we have on Darakuta Ranch to this day.