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.
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.