REGINA – Miniature Herefords stepped into the national spotlight for the first time at this year’s Canadian Western Agribition.
The Miniature Hereford Breeders Association of Canada’s first show and auction offered bulls and females for sale.
The top seller was a young horned bull owned by Rob Ross of Innisfail, Alta. Darcy Wall of Cochrane, Alta., paid $13,000 for a quarter semen interest in the bull, which weighed 817 pounds and had a full set of horns and a curly white face.
The sale averaged $2,467 on 25 live animals as well as semen and embryo lots.
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A single and aligned check-off collection system based on where producers live makes the system equal said Chad Ross, Saskatchewan Cattle Association chair.
“If the border had been open, we would have had more cattle and more money and more interest,” said Ross, who is president of the breeders’ association.
He is a fourth generation Hereford breeder who enjoys the diversity of the miniatures at his Prairie Fire Ranch. He finds he can keep two miniatures for every one Hereford cow.
The association has about 20 members, mostly in Alberta. Less than 250 miniatures are registered.
Ross wants to see standards applied to the animals so the minimum height at the hip is set at 35.5 inches with a maximum of 48 inches. He has met with resistance because some want to go smaller.
“I want to keep it so we can still get a good-sized carcass,” he said.
He saw the breed for the first time at a show in San Francisco, and bought his first miniatures from the United States, where they have been gaining popularity for about 10 years.
The cattle are full registered Herefords and many trace their pedigrees back to well-known animals such as Britisher, Standard and Domino.
They derived from American herds that never deviated from the short, squat style of cattle that was popular until the 1950s. Interested breeders started selecting for smaller heifers and bulls to develop the strain.
Miniatures rate a one on the one to nine average frame score. Many American producers are attempting to breed them smaller, with those animals rated from 0 to 0000.
“The meat cuts are not small, unless you are a strapping man, you might eat two steaks,” said Kenny Petersen, who breeds miniatures in Tekamah, Nebraska.
He said selecting for size does not detract from other valuable qualities, such as docility, good foraging abilities and mothering quality.
“They get to be yard ornaments and you don’t want that.”
The miniatures are registered with the Canadian or American Hereford Associations as full-fledged members, although they need to be calculated separately when recording expected progeny differences.
