WHY MINIATURE HEREFORD?

With the skyrocketing cost of fuel, fertilizer, and feed cost we are facing today, it would be wise to think about down sizing our cattle operation and pick the breed that has better strenghts of feed efficiency, longevity, docile temperament, fertility and hardiness.  Well, with all these traits in mind, we couldn't think any breed better than the Hereford, especially the Miniature Hereford.  

Miniature Hereford and other miniature cattles are getting more and more popular now aday, especially to those that have small acres.  They would have miniature hereford for their aggriculture exemption, pets, 4H projects, and last but not least, meat quality. 

Well, the "Miniature" speaks for itself.  It's small and much easier to raise and handle with.  Beside, they are much more docile than most standard cattles.  Miniature Hereford has very high yield on regular grass.  According to American Hereford Association, Hereford cattles are low maintenance, efficient, converters of grass and grain, espcially during this period of high feed and fuel cost.  Being miniature, we could have more heads of Miniature Herefords on the pasture as comparing to standard hereford.  When it comes to meat quality, you can't ask more than these miniature hereford.  Hereford meat has been documented very tender and palatable.  Marbling ranks second only to Angus.  When it comes to labor and being docile, all we need is the bag of feed, we could worm them easily or load them in trailers or transfer them from pasture to pasture.

There are polled and horned Miniature Hereford just like their standard class.  However, the polled Miniature Hereford is hard to find.  There are few breeders in the US do sell semens for their polled Miniature Hereford genetics. 

Miniature Hereford is about half the size of the standard Hereford.  They are average from 38-39" to 45-48" depends on how small they are.  There are classification based on "0000; 000; 00; 0" system that I will put on the website whenever it's available.  But generally, the smaller they are, the more "0" they would be classified. For example, if the cow is 3 years old and 39" tall, she would considered "0000" (4 odds) cow.  And usually the smaller they are, the more it would cost.

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There are pretty much the same requirements for Miniature Hereford as for the standard cattles on pasture, except you could have more heads on the pasture.  I don't know exactly, but we have doubled the numbers of our Miniature Hereford as comparing to the number of our standard cattles before and still have plenty of grass for them.  We divided our pasture in half and rotate them regularly.  Being Miniature they tend not to damage the pasture as did the standard cattles.  The grass is doing a lot better as well.

Beside these, Miniature Hereford tend to retain the same gestration period, have the same routine vacination and check up, mineral, supplements, and water in general as the standard cattle.  Miniature Herefords are registered with American Miniature Hereford Association where they requires the same tatooing, tagging, and registration as the standard Hereford.  You could contact American Hereford Association or Miniature Hereford Breeders Association for more information about registration and activities and events about Miniature Hereford, respectively. www.hereford.org  and  www.mhbaonline.org