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Posted on 05/23/2009 7:27:10 AM PDT by School of Rational Thought
Reporting from Tekamah, Neb. -- Walking through their lowing herd of several hundred cattle, Ali and Kenny Petersen were like two Gullivers on a Lilliputian roundup.
The half-sized cows barely reached Kenny's waist. The ranch's border collie stared eye-to-eye with wandering calves.
"Aren't they sweet?" asked Ali Petersen, 52, shooing Half-Pint, Buttercup and a dozen other cattle across a holding pen. "They're my babies, every little one of them."
The Petersens once raised normal-sized bovines on this stretch of Nebraska's rolling eastern grasslands, but with skyrocketing feed costs, the couple decided to downsize.
They bought minicows -- compact cattle with stocky bodies, smaller frames and relatively tiny appetites.
Their miniature Herefords consume about half that of a full-sized cow yet produce 50% to 75% of the rib-eyes and fillets, according to researchers and budget-conscious farmers.
"We get more sirloin and less soup bone," Ali said. "People used to look at them and laugh. Now, they want to own them."
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(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
the economics of this are pretty appealing...75% of the higher quality cuts of beef and 50% of the feed costs...I’ll take it...
No, its a Jack-in-the-Box commercial.
We know some people who own Dexters. They tell us we can get about 200 pounds of meat from one of them. We keep meaning to buy one for slaughter, but so far other purchases have gotten in the way. By the time I’m ready to buy, they’re sold out for the year.
Maybe next year. Or maybe next year, we’ll buy a side of Black Angus. Living in Oklahoma, it’s great to have these options. And the folks we know do not pump their cattle full of junk. Only the absolute minimum of injections to satisfy the Ag Dept, I suppose.
But you MUST have a full size freezer for the meat if you buy that much at one time.
Ping.
The nice thing is kids can ride miniature ponies to roundup the little cows.
Cow tipping just got a lot easier.
It would be so cool to have one of these in the backyard...
My husband had a midget bull calf born into his herd of regular sized cattle. He is a cute little guy and he has been named Worm.
Sliders!
Herefords have had a recessive drawf gene for a long time. Ranchers used to consider this a problem.
My husband raises rodeo bulls and I don’t know if there is any Hereford in him. He is solid black but he could be anything.
"Minicows are not genetically engineered to be tiny, and they're not dwarfs. Instead, they are drawn from original breeds brought to the U.S. from Europe in the 1800s that were smaller than today's bovine giants, said Ron Lemenager, professor of animal science at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.
"The Petersens' mini-Herefords, with their white faces and rounded auburn-hued bodies, weigh in at a dainty 500 to 700 pounds, compared with 1,300 pounds or more for their heftier brethren.
"Big cows emerged as a product of the 1950s and '60s, when farmers were focused on getting more meat and didn't fret as much about the efficient use of animal feed or grasslands.
"'Feed prices were relatively cheap, and grazing lands were accessible,' Lemenager said. "The plan was to get more meat per animal. But it went way too far. The animals got too big and eat so much."
I think it's a good idea to return to the original stock, which has some good and often overlooked genetic traits.
Best of all, they have 3 handles on their udders, rather than 4.
Suppliers to White Castles everywhere.
I drawf for a living ;-)
Thanks Springman!! I wondered where you have been. These were the kind of cows that we all had in the 50’s & 60’s. I have a picture of my Daddy standing in the corrals with a bunch of 700lb. Herefords in the 50’s. The genetic breeding of our angus cows now allows us to wein 700lb calves every fall. Amazing how the business has evolved. We are needing rain & lots of it but will just keep plugging till we get some. Nice hearing from you. Denco
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