Selectively Bred "Super Cattle" Sparks Interest
April 16th, 2020
David Lewis, for the Nightly North Shore News
Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with local Massachusetts farmer Dmitri Gavrill Petrikov about his new breed of “Super Cattle,” showcased at the Frights and Fun Festival this past October. It is not every day that a livestock show makes big enough waves to appear in national news, but we Salemites know how to put on a show! And that skill might finally be paying off as his hard work has apparently attracted some scouts from Demeterian Goods, the largest agribusiness company in North America.
Seeing Petrikov’s Super Cattle for the first time was an experience I’ll never forget. Babushka, Petrikov’s prized cow, was a staggering seven feet tall with bulging muscles, thick veins, tattoos, stark white skin and a piercing gaze. It was like looking into the eyes of an ancient god of lactation. I think the tattoo was a brand put on Babushka by Petrikov, but it added to the intimidation, for sure.
Babushka, Petrikov’s prized “Super-Cow”
This humble reporter wasn’t the only one touched by this creature. The rest of the festival-goers were milked for as much wonder as they could give; dazzled to our cores. But for what reason was Babushka raised? Petrikov stated on his blog that the purpose of his Super Cattle is to generate a source of meat with a considerably lower fat content. Given the wildly bizarre appearance of Babushka and several of his pigs, I assumed that we were not getting the whole story. I asked Petrikov what his motives were, curious to see if he had any ulterior motives beyond winning “Most Outlandishly Weird Cow.”
“Truthfully, I bred this specific cattle entirely on accident. “ He explained
“An accident? All of them?” I asked
“Well no, not this group specifically. But this breed was an accident several years back.”
“How on Earth did you manage that?”
“It would take quite a while to get into the specifics, but I had been selectively breeding cattle for decades. The rest of the House and I trying to isolate a specific bovine blood group that wasn’t harmful to Vampires”.
(For those who are not familiar, Petrikov is a member of the House Gavrill, a centuries-old family of vampires living just north of Salem. They are an information-driven family that has been curating scientific knowledge since the 1790s, and for the past hundred or so years, Petrikov has been contributing to the research of DNA and more recently, genetic experimentation.)
He continues:
“Any self-respecting vampire will tell you that Synthetic Blood is barely a substitute for the real thing, you know, so we were trying to discover a natural alternative in cows.”
“Ah I see. So you were looking for a blood mutation?”
“In a sense. In a truer sense, we gene-spliced them, trying to get them to produce blood with a human essence. Instead, however, the new blood reacted with their muscles making an incredibly dense meat which, while not useful to Vampires in the slightest, might be far healthier for Humans!”
Petrikov did not seem hopeful that his cattle would ever be easier to look at, but it appears that the mutation that the Gavrill House was able to isolate is applicable to most livestock. In the weeks following the showing, New England District Manager Debbie Hill, of Demeterian Goods apparently reached out to the Gavrill House offering to employ Salemite farmers to raise a generation of Gavrill Super Cattle for consumer testing.
When reached for a comment, Petrikov said that he was unsure if he wanted to market his “botched” genetic experiment, but seemed excited at the prospect of boosting local business.
More tests need to be done to see if Babushka’s meat is safe for humans in the longrun, but it seems likely that we could be seeing her on shelves within the next couple of years.