Posted on 10/28/2004 3:13:00 PM PDT by sociotard
RAUL Hernandez, a Cuban rancher, claims to have bred a family pet that pays its way - a mini-cow about the size of an Alsatian dog.
Although the same basic shape as any of the world’s famous breeds of cattle, such as Holstein or Aberdeen-Angus, those bred by Mr Hernandez are less than half the size.
Standing about 23 inches (58 centimetres) to 28 inches (71 centimetres) tall, the mini-cows can be kept in a small area, graze simple grasses and weeds, and are, Mr Hernandez says, "a perfect source of milk for Cuban families".
"They are patio cows - easy to work with," the 74-year-old says, smiling. "They give less meat, but they can deliver four or five litres (about a gallon) of top-quality milk to a family every day."
After retiring from a state ranch where he worked for more than 30 years, Mr Hernandez decided he wanted to remain busy and useful. He acquired the Santa Isabel Farm in the tobacco-growing region of western Pinar del Rio province, about 125 miles west of Havana.
Amid the rolling hills surrounded by towering palm trees, Mr Hernandez worked with local agricultural labourers to plant food crops. Then he decided to try breeding miniature cows.
By his own account, there was nothing notably scientific about his attempts. He simply began with a tiny bull, which neighbours had ridiculed because of its size, and mated it with the smallest cows he could find.
With a speed which cattle-breeding specialists and geneticists around the world might envy, he claims that, five years on, he has reached his objective - a herd of cows that reach no higher than his waist.
He says his success has ranchers throughout the area pursuing breeding experiments to come up with their own tiny cows, while he is training local teenagers to help care for the little animals.
"Now the neighbours are excited by the idea," he said.
Dr Tim Roughsedge, an animal breeding research scientist with the Scottish Agricultural College, was not quite so impressed.
"It is possible to carry out extreme selection breeding programmes, with dogs the best-known example," he said. "From one ancestor, we have breeds that range from the tiny Chihuahua to the Irish wolfhound and most points in between, almost all produced by extreme interventionist methods.
"So, it is possible that Mr Hernandez has produced a breed of cattle barely the size of large dogs. Whether they would make useful family pets is another matter."
For at least the past 30 years, mainstream cattle breeders around the world, whether based on farms or in research stations, have worked at increasing the size of cattle breeds and the amount of meat and milk they produce.
A Holstein milk cow, which can produce about ten gallons of milk a day, will be at least twice as tall as a Hernandez cow. A beef cow, such as an Aberdeen-Angus, will be nearly twice as tall and up to four times as heavy.
But there are naturally small breeds, such as the Dexter, which stands about a metre (39 inches) high at the shoulder, and the native Shetland cow, which can survive on the poorest grazing.
These breeds, especially the Dexter, have been used by novelty breeders, mainly in the United States. One such operation is Pillard’s miniature cattle ranch in Iowa, which is trying to breed cattle less than 36 inches tall weighing less than 500lb. It seems that Mr Hernandez is ahead of the game.
Ha! An excellent point, and well put.
Man, I wanna live where you are. Gallon of milk is $3.99 here at grocery here.
Costco has them for $2.05, but it's across town and only a monthly trip kind of thing.
I used to be one, and produced 250,000 market hogs in the years I farmed. That's over 17,000 tons of pork meat.
I know a little about having to be at work 7 days a week 365 a year. Christmas, new Years etc, were shorter 4 hour days, with rotating schedules. It's a grinding schedule.
Why is that desire a liberal one only? There is nothing wrong with having your own goat or mini-cow, if you can swing it with the zoning.
Perhaps some of us *like* truly fresh milk, butter, and cheese, aren't fond of driving everywhere, and don't want a "new car" to drive around in. Perhaps some children would actually do better to be raised with the responsibility of taking care of the animal and helping prepare the food it produces, rather than being chauffered everywhere in that new car.
Seems to me trying to retain some of the good things of the past is a *conservative* value.
First Castro brags about what good whores they have, and now this. The good news and breakthroughs for progress never stop on that blessed isle.
No. These are lawnmowers. I thought sheep were lawnmowers while in Spain. But you can put a chain on these and let them go for it! The chain is so they don't sit in the middle of the street.
"You sir are obviously not a fan of gardening."
I love gardening. I like cattle, too. I go out my back door and see plenty of them. I also smell them and see them dump several pounds of poop each day. A calf (fair comparison to a micro-cow) puts out maybe thirty pounds of poop per day as cows are vegetarian and must eat a lot as compared to a dog which eats small amounts of protein-rich foods. Cows poop lots more than dogs. Just the way it is.
I don't see how this would be practical in Havana.
Dwarf cows are not a part of the history of farming. There's absolutely nothing wrong with raising children on a farm, but part of that traditional American ethic was teaching kids that farming, and the responsibility that goes with it, served a valuable purpose. These cows don't.
I know that. I was talking about the amount of money a person has to earn (before taxes) in order to buy $2.50 worth of milk with after tax dollars.
Excuse me for raining on your idyllic memories of childhood, but I live on a farm and own cows.
Assuming a 305 day lactation cycle, an average American Holstein milk cow will produce over 21,000lbs of milk per year, or almost ten times the milk the Cuban government claims for one of these little critters, plus the bull calves can be fed out for beef production.
Except as a pet, or curiosity in the vein of the Vietnamese pot-belly pig, (or as a propaganda story foisted on a naive and willing media) This animal would serve no economic purpose in a free 21st century society.
And it may well be that by the end of the 21st century, dairy cows will serve no economic purpose in free society, either and those dumbass Cubans will only have advanced to getting their milk from the dairy farm factory.
In my family's situation, we weren't interested in having 21,000# of milk a year. At the time, Holsteins produced around 2 gal. of milk per day (far less than they produce today)--which was more than we needed, so we had a Guernsey cow which produced less milk but had a higher butterfat content. Which brings up another point--look at the dramatic increases in milk production per cow over the past 40 years. The Cuban guy has produced a small cow that gives about as much milk that a much larger cow, the Guernsey, produced 40 years ago...and he has bred that cow into being in about 5 years, according to the article. Given the track record of the American dairy industry, what kind of yields could one expect of the mini-cow after 40 years of selective breeding for milk production? Perhaps a two-fold increase in an animal half the size requiring less space/ smaller barns/ less capital investment? So, to pronounce the eeconomic viability of the mini-cow to the 21st century DOA is a bit premature, IMO.
And, sure enough, Holstein bull calves can be castrated and fed out for ''meat'' production, but I don't care how you paint a Holstein, it isn't a ''beef'' cow. I'll have my ribeye cut from another cow...which, BTW, is why we bred our Guernsey with an Angus bull and prayed like hell that the calf would be a bull calf--something I don't think many dairy farmers do.
Yup, and you were eating real butter when about everyone else you knew was eating (yuck) oleomargarine. :-)
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