A Few Words Regarding Small Animals

Well, I must say, I really didn't see this coming. The new Jack In The Box commercial with all those "cows the size of schnauzers but they're cattle "...is really coming true. Check out this link (CLICK RIGHT HERE FOR THE MINI-COW ORIGINAL STORY) But, unlike the pure comedy genius of the JITB marketing and advertising team, the idea of bringing back more smaller cattle is not fool-hardy at all. The best thing is, the mini-cows are real. They are not genetic copies, they are just smaller cousins of their larger bovine relatives who came from Europe. The article also mentions that during the middle of the 20th century, farm land was easy to procure, and farmers cared little about how much efficiency they were getting out of their cows...they just like 'em big. (Weird...in America...we think bigger means better...weird...) The farmers believed the bigger cows would result in more product, which is occasionally true, but the larger cows need MUCH, MUCH more food and land to graze, whereas our mini friends, need only a fraction of that land and food. A really good article to read.


Anyway, why did I post this? Well, its a way that people are trying to change the way we normally do things. And raising gigantic cattle has become synonymous with American Farmers, and the result is the depreciation of vital farmland and resources, that we never took into consideration while these big cows roamed the countryside. Now, in the midst of a HUMAN-CREATED dilemma (mainly world food supplies and shrinking grazing lands, but I suppose I could name a few more...) and the point of this blog, well, one of the points, is to show how some people take their future and ours into their own hands. The farmers who are switching to at least some of the smaller cows, are reaping in the benefits and will continue to do so. And its not like these cows are small mammals, they weight around 600 pounds. But the amount of food they eat and need to survive is drastically reduced when compared to their larger brethren. It's just nice to see how people are looking right in their own backyard for the solutions to the problems facing us all. Go Mini-Cows, Go!