it can also be greatly affected by learning, based on individual experience and imitation between social partners (for example efficient trekking and grazing behaviour and diet preferences). Animals’ feeding motivation is manipulated through optimizing their digestive feedback, and ensuring best fodder quality and preferred foraging conditions. A carefully diversified diet of grasses and browse is favoured, in order to correct nutritional imbalances which, particularly during the dry season, could keep feeding motivation low by triggering negative digestive feedback. The dry-season watering regime is also tailored in order to hone cattle’s digestive performance to meet the herders’ long-term strategic goal of maximizing reproduction. The production strategy is very demanding on both people and the herd. With the onset of the dry season, while other pastoral groups sharing the same ecosystem move closer to water points, where water is more accessible but pasture is poor, the WoDaaBe move in the opposite direction, trying to keep their camps close to prime fodder. This results in longdistance mobility and a watering regime which, at the peak of the hot season, often involves journeys of 25–30 kilometres to reach the well, with the herd drinking every third day. It is, therefore, essential to the WoDaaBe’s production strategy that functional behavioural patterns are maintained within the herd. Consequently, their breeding system focuses on fostering social organization and interaction within the herd. It encourages sharing of animals’ feeding competence across the breeding network, and tries to guarantee the genetic and “cultural” continuity of successful cattle lineages within the network. These lineages have proved capable of prospering under the WoDaaBe’s herd management system, and over a long enough period to have included episodes of severe stress. The breeding strategy focuses on ensuring the reliability of the herd’s reproductive performance,more than on maximizing individual performance in specific traits.