Miniature Cows for Beef for Sale
Meat From Minis
Pint-sized cattle provide land-efficient beef.
By Callie Leuck
An unusual herd of cattle graze in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. They are all less than three and a half feet tall and nearly as wide as they are wide — similar "barrels on legs," said Rob Clements when we met on his belongings, Misty Meadows Farm, a few miles off Go out 235 on Virginia's I-81. Miniature cattle have gotten attention of late mostly every bit novelty pets — particularly for people with footling land who want to keep livestock — but they are also an efficient way for a farmer to enhance meat.
Clements began breeding miniature cattle almost past accident. While raising full-sized Galloways, he found one of his cattle was on the small side. When he bred it with another minor Galloway, the resulting dogie was so small-scale that Clements was concerned. So he discovered in that location are people who are intentionally raising and breeding miniature cattle.
These smaller cattle are being bred for two main reasons: they are easier to handle, and they require less land per acre, says the International Miniature Cow Breeders Society (IMCBS). 2 full-sized cattle need five acres, while two miniatures need just ii acres.
The IMCBS and a registry that tracks twenty-6 miniature cattle breeds are run by Happy Mountains Miniature Cattle Farm, a Seattle-based arrangement started over thirty years ago by the belatedly Richard Gradwohl. His organisation developed xviii breeds of miniature cattle by crossing diverse total-size breeds with smaller cows until they "bred truthful." " Two animals of the same variety "brood true" when they produce consequent, replicable, and predictable offspring.
Nonetheless, miniature cows are not mutual. Clements' farm is 1 of the few places in Virginia that breeds minis at all, and unlike the new amalgamated breeds of miniatures at Happy Mountains, Clements's herd is purebred Galloway - unusual in the US. Clements' miniatures are registered alongside normal-sized cattle on the US Galloway registry; there is no split up registry for miniature Galloways.
In Australia, Galloway miniatures are more than common. An official Australian Miniature Galloway registry provides the criteria: less than fifty-pound nascence weight and no more than than one hundred five centimeters (three and xl-iv-hundredths feet) at the top of the back at xi months. Clements has carefully cultivated his cattle's genes to meet the criteria for miniature Galloways, picking up more than small Galloway bulls over fourth dimension. All the animals in his herd, which contained 40-3 animals in 2011, encounter the Australian criteria.
According to the IMCBS, total beef production per acre is significantly greater when raising miniature cattle. Clements constitute he was able to produce more than beef per acre when he switched to minis. Indeed, his pounds per acre doubled. Because the miniatures have a smaller body frame and size to maintain, they likewise have a improve feed efficiency. Clements agreed with the IMCBS that miniature cattle are easier to handle, and added he had noticed they tend to be more docile than their larger counterparts.
Why then, if these smaller cows are then much more efficient to raise, are they not commonplace? Why aren't all American hamburgers made from miniature cattle?
"You lot can't sell them on the article market!" Clements explained. "The packing plants want big. They want a large moo-cow to put on a hook."
The drive for large cattle began after Globe War Two, when Americans migrated to cities and demand for meat began to rising. Before this, about cattle were smaller, much closer to the size of new miniature breeds today. But equally demand for meat rose, demand for large cattle rose likewise.
I miniature brood that Richard Gradwohl developed for beef production at Happy Mountains "never took off as well as the cute minis for pets," said his girl Michelle Gradwohl. She added that it would be difficult to persuade all the ranchers who raise full-sized cattle for beef product to switch to miniature cattle.
Withal, miniatures could entreatment to a niche market place. Aside from their high efficiency, miniature cattle besides avowal superior beef. In an article on his website, Richard Gradwohl wrote that the shorter prison cell structure in miniature cattle naturally leads to tender meat. Big cattle take long, slender cells that tend to be tougher; they are therefore fed grain to fatten them up and "marble" the beefiness, creating pockets of fat throughout the meat. "This results in many undesirable effects from feeding cattle grain and hormones to make them gain faster," Gradwohl wrote.
Clements suspects the season has more than to do with the difference betwixt how individual farmers raise grass-fed miniature cattle compared to how larger cows are raised in factory farms, than with the cell structure. Additionally, as many of the new miniature cattle breeds were developed past mixing breeds, they may take characteristics from those dissimilar breeds that could outcome in a unique-tasting beefiness. Later on all, "unlike breeds have [different] flavors," according to Clements.
In his experience, beef from his miniature Galloways maintains the Galloway beef's reputation for great flavor. Galloway cattle take a double hair glaze that reduces the need for internal fat for warmth, making purebred Galloway beef lean and juicy. Its flavor is noticeably different from Angus beef, which is the most common commercially available beef in the U.s.a.. The flavor of the miniature Galloways may besides exist influenced by stress - or rather, lack of stress. Michelle Gradwohl noted in an email that miniatures are usually raised in a at-home environment such as a small farm, unlike the larger cattle raised in feed lots. When cattle are stressed, as they often are in feed lots, they release hormones that requite a less appealing flavour to the meat.
The virtually noticeable divergence in the miniature cattle meat is the smaller size of the specialty cuts. "People don't want big steaks," Clements said. "Some volition cut them up in four pieces for dissimilar meals." For people who don't want gigantic portions, steaks from the minis are reasonable sizes for a single serving. The IMCBS says these smaller cuts are "perfectly suited to the restaurant trade."
The smaller size of these specialty cuts, combined with the fact that miniatures are currently grass-fed and free of unnecessary hormones, means that pocket-sized farmers raising miniatures may detect a specialty market in restaurants and amid individuals interested in land-efficient, and therefore eco-friendly, hormone-free beefiness.
Callie Leuck is a writer and proofreader currently working for a Medicare contractor in Indianapolis, Indiana. She holds a master'due south caste in science-medical writing from Johns Hopkins University. She can be reached at callie@callieleuck.com
Source: http://hawkmoth.us/meat-from-minis
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