from LA Times:
With feed prices up, ranchers see the advantages of smaller breeds of bovines.
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, 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."
In the last few years, ranchers across the country have been snapping up mini Hereford and Angus calves that fit in a person's lap. Farmers who raise mini Jerseys brag how each animal provides 2 to 3 gallons of milk a day, though they complain about having to crouch down on their knees to reach the udders.
"Granny always said I prayed for my milk," said Tim O'Donnell, 53, who milks his 15 miniature Jerseys twice a day on his farm in Altamont, Ill.
Minicows are not genetically engineered to be tiny, and they're not dwarfs. 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."
Today, there's little room for inefficiency on a modern farm, and that has led some farmers to consider minicows.
The minicows have been a perfect fit with another trend in farm efficiency -- the move to ranchettes, smaller operations run by families or small groups of workers. The number of smaller farms has boomed in recent years, growing to nearly 700,000 in 2007 from 580,000 in 2002, according to the latest census by the Department of Agriculture.
"When you have a back four, instead of a back 40 [acres], you need to think small," said Carolyn Peevler, 60, who runs the Mini Moo Farm in Veedersburg, Ind.
They soon realized they had more field than cattle; one animal needed less than an acre for grazing. Because the minicows could be grass fed, the couple were spending at least half the amount on feed than they would have on regular-sized animals. The minicows also reached their mature weight faster, so they could be sold for meat sooner.
The Peevlers have built their herd up to 16. One steer provides enough beef to fill the couple's freezer for a year. Carolyn Peevler also considers them "green" red meat: They cause less wear and tear on her pasture land and fences and, she said with a laugh, they emit less methane gas.
