Mini-Cows

by FOX News Crews; By FNC Reporter Anita Vogel

Look around and you’ll see lots of people are downsizing their lives.  We’re all cutting back in one way or another – getting smaller cars, smaller houses, smaller 401k’s (by default of course) … and smaller cows …  yes, the kind that go “mooooooo”.

They’re called miniature cows …  and they’re kinda cute …  for a cow I mean.

More and more of them are popping up on ranches across the U.S.  Our FOX News Crew visited the P.J. Ranch in Merced, California to get a look at these things up close and personal.

So what’s the deal???  It looks like a cow, acts like a cow, smells like a cow …  it IS a cow, only half the size of a normal cow.  Holy Cow!  Where do they come from?   How did they get here?

Rancher Bob Potter, one of the friendliest people you could EVER meet says it’s really simple…  “We looked for the smallest bulls we could find across the country,” says Potter.  Then he put them together with the smallest heifers he could find, and voila …  a mini cow is born.

Turns out not only are they smaller, they’re cheaper to maintain, require less food, less wear and tear on the ranch, and take up a lot less room, so you don’t have to have a giant ranch like on that tv show Dallas.  You could practically put one in your backyard …  Unless you don’t like to clean up cow-pies … Because after all they are cows, and they do what cows do.

But despite their diminutive stature, about half the size and weight of a normal cow, they produce lots of beef, about 65 percent of edible beef per steer, that’s 15 percent more than a regular size cow.
And because they’re smaller and easier to handle, more women are getting into the act of cattle ranching.  Lisa Bos who lives down the road from Bob Potter says she can easily pick up a 35 lb. baby calf, but would struggle with an 85 lb. tike from a regular size mama cow.

She and her husband have switched their whole ranch from the larger anguses to the more dainty mini cows, and is happy she did.
Back at P.J. Ranch, Bob Potter’s computer is spilling over with emails and his phone is ringing off the hook with calls from Maine, Ohio and Northern California, just five minutes after we finished our first LIVE  shot.  It seems there are lots of FOX News viewers interested in buying some of Bob’s mini cows, and one question they won’t be asking is, where’s the beef?