WI: Yakutian cattle and Yakutian horses adapted wholesale by the Russian Empire? Populated Siberia?

Deleted member 97083

Yakutian horses and Yakutian cattle are interesting, polar-adapted breeds raised by the native Yakutian people of the Sakha Republic.

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The Yakutian horse is noted for its adaptation to the extreme cold climate of Yakutia, including the ability to locate and graze on vegetation that is under deep snow cover, and to survive without shelter in temperatures that reach −70 °C (−94 °F). Yakutian horses are kept unstabled year-round, and in the roughly 800 years that they have been present in Siberia, they have developed a range of remarkable morphologic, metabolic and physiologic adaptions to this harsh environment.

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The Yakutian cattle have a large abdomen and long digestive tract allow them to make efficient use both of grass and browse--presumably eat woodier vegetation that normal cattle can't eat. They grow subcutaneous fat very quickly during the short pasture season and survive under poor feed conditions in winter. Together with the Yakutian horse, it was the basis of the Sakha culture of meat and dairy livestock in the harsh conditions of the Russian Far North.

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So, what if some enterprising Russian settlers of Siberia, or native Siberian peoples other than the Yakut trading with the Yakut, had wholesale adopted Yakutian cattle and horses, trading them along the taiga ecoregion of the Russian Empire until they are the predominant livestock in Siberia?

If all the Russian settlements in Siberia raised Yakutian cattle and horses well-adapted to boreal conditions, how might it affect the economic viability of Siberian trading posts and settlements? Would Siberia more quickly turn over to farming and pastoralism as opposed to its barebones fur trading economy of the early years? And how does this affect Russian presence in the Pacific, with areas like Kamchatka more able to be settled?

How does it affect the political relationship of native Siberian peoples to the Tsar, as well, with having higher populations?
 
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trurle

Banned
Historically (~3000 years ago) IOTL, early European cattle had a large in-mix of genes from populations residing in Western Siberia. Therefore, the OP has to some degree already happened. The European Russian cattle and horse breeds had the parts of gene package allowing cold-hardiness of Yakutian breeds. The downside is likely stunted growth - if body is optimized to build fat, it does not build bones and muscles as fast as less cold-hardy varieties.
Cold-hardy cattle/horses positive effects (more power for agriculture and trade in specific climates) would be marginal. Slight negative effects are more probable. Simply, more abundant horses/cattle would graze on pastures which would be otherwise converted to marginal farmland, resulting in lower population of Northern Siberia, and wider nomadic belt.
 

Deleted member 97083

Historically (~3000 years ago) IOTL, early European cattle had a large in-mix of genes from populations residing in Western Siberia. Therefore, the OP has to some degree already happened. The European Russian cattle and horse breeds had the parts of gene package allowing cold-hardiness of Yakutian breeds. The downside is likely stunted growth - if body is optimized to build fat, it does not build bones and muscles as fast as less cold-hardy varieties.
Cold-hardy cattle/horses positive effects (more power for agriculture and trade in specific climates) would be marginal. Slight negative effects are more probable. Simply, more abundant horses/cattle would graze on pastures which would be otherwise converted to marginal farmland, resulting in lower population of Northern Siberia, and wider nomadic belt.
The presence of a more specialized breed of cattle or horse doesn't mean the Russians would stop using other breeds where they are suitable, though.

The areas where Yakutian cattle and Yakutian horses would be most useful would be areas that don't support even marginal agriculture. Nonetheless, 19th century Russian political exiles were able to establish agriculture in the Sakha Republic, where Yakutian pastoralism was already practiced.
 
None of the other nations around the Yakuts (for whom livestock was a non-negotiable cultural marker) managed to adopt their pastoral package. The Tungusic peoples stuck with reindeer alone, for example. I think a combination of reindeer and fishing (plentiful large fish, low populations, after all), might be marginally more effective than subarctic cattle+horses.

In fact many Mongol peoples were primarily fishermen and reindeer herders as opposed to their more famous horse-riding cousins to the south.
 
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