Miniature cattle sweeping rural America?

To read the recent Wall Street Journal front page article, you'd swear that miniature cattle and other animals are sweeping America. They are cute, out in somebody's two-acre front yard, but their economic practicality in mass production agriculture is open to serious question--and why they're not a big future trend.

In the cattle industry, meat packing plants is set up for carcasses to "fit the box." The whole production line is set up to handle carcasses that weigh 1100-1200 pounds, and when cut up into primal cuts, fill boxes that stack conveniently on pallets and into trucks. There's big discounts for any that are significantly lighter or heavier than this, as they must be hand-processed, don't fit the box, and therefore much more costly to handle.

A Miniature Hereford or Lowline (as miniature Angus are called) carcass would be lucky to hit 600 pounds, dripping wet. Since meat is sold by the pound, if you're serious about producing meat, obviously the return is much higher if you produce more--not less--of it.

About the best you can say is that if you live on a 2-10 acre "ranchette," little cattle or sheep are a lot easier to handle on your little ranch. But short of growing marijuana, it would be hard to turn a profit on 2-10 acress, no matter what you did. Little cattle that look just like the big ones make a nice decoration on your place.

You might make a little money selling little cattle to other people with little ranches, but as a major economic contributor to feeding America's teeming masses--that's not in the cards with miniature livestock.