Miniature cattle (or mini cows as most people call them) are cattle that meet a height requirement. The breed of mini moo can vary, but miniature Highland and miniature Galloway cattle are the most popular.
Some of these cattle are naturally short (the result of two short parents) and some of them have a version of cattle dwarfism - also known as chondrodysplasia or "chondro" for short. Because of the way genetics work, not all calves from miniature parents will be chondro carriers.
You can read more about chondro here.
There are different classifications of miniature cattle;
- Micro miniature
- Miniature
- Mid-size miniature
The chart below might be helpful when understanding how the size brackets work. The chart has been converted from inches to cm and is intended for use as a guide only.
It can be hard to guess the mature height of a young miniature heifer, bull or steer, but this chart can be used to try and help estimate if a suspected mini will stay mini. We get lots of requests for "micro minis" - this is not something we can guarantee.
Our bulls are almost "micro" and we have two cows that are considered "micro mini cows" but we can't guarantee that our calves will be "micro mini". Betty and Cleo are our micro mini cows - both of them are out of full size cows. As a calf, Betty was the same size as her paddock mates, but stopped growing when they kept going.
Betty has had two calves (one to a Jersey bull and one to Boris) and both of these calves were born very tall and very leggy - it makes it very difficult to guess how mini they will end up. Be very aware of a breeder promising a micro mini Highland calf.
