Pint-sized cattle are a Cuban revolution

[dArKeR]

RAUL Hernandez, a Cuban rancher, claims to have bred a family pet that pays its way - a mini-cow about the size of an Alsatian dog.

Although the same basic shape as any of the world’s famous breeds of cattle, such as Holstein or Aberdeen-Angus, those bred by Mr Hernandez are less than half the size.

Standing about 23 inches (58 centimetres) to 28 inches (71 centimetres) tall, the mini-cows can be kept in a small area, graze simple grasses and weeds, and are, Mr Hernandez says, "a perfect source of milk for Cuban families".

"They are patio cows - easy to work with," the 74-year-old says, smiling. "They give less meat, but they can deliver four or five litres (about a gallon) of top-quality milk to a family every day."

http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=1076902004

[Spinzonner]

1. Udderly Amazing

[Placebo]

2. I want one!

Since it's going to be yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeears until I can afford a farm of my own (I am only 18) might as well start small!

[AWhitneyBrown]

3. Patio Cow?

Gives a gallon of milk a day?
Can't see how this is an improvement over the goat, which will eat anything, starts giving milk the first year, instead of waiting for two, often has twins, is a lot hardier, and also gives about a gallon a day. Plus, the milk has less fat, the meat is tasty, and goats are cheap.

[tblue37]

4. Are you really

A. Whitney Brown, or just borrowing the signature of that brilliant comedian. And if just borrowing, is that even legal?

[incapsulated]

5. But I hate goat milk

I want a cute mini-cow. :D

[Jackpine Radical]

12. Cows don't climb everywhere

& are a LOT easier to keep inside a fence. A few decades ago the people who then lived on the farm I'm now on had goats. The neighbors still haven't forgotten. The goats were always getting out into other people's crops, damaging things, etc. You always have goat tracks & manure in interesting places, like on top of your car.

[MadHound]

17. Have you ever had to take care of goats?

Intelligent, extrodinairly stubborn, royal pains in the butt is what goats are. My father had us kids raise milk goats for the poor in South America when I was a kid. I was bitten, butted, and bowled over by those critters within the first week. Always trying to sneak out, and lord oh lord, if you had to pill them for vaccinations and such, look out.

Give me a cow, a horse, a pig, any day, just keep the goats to yourself.

[Hand]

21. Cuba has goats galore...

They're all over the place; when we visited five yrs. ago, goats were wandering around in the small towns and even the cities, contentedly munching everything in sight and indiscrimininately fertilizing.

Once at our hotel, the buffet dinner included something that looked like beef and tasted like lamb. I eventualy figured out that it was goat... not bad.

BTW, we're Canadian so we could go these without obstruction--along with a lot of fat Germans in Speedos. :puke:

[Judi Lynn]

6. Interesting point made in this Scottish newspaper

You never see this being mentioned in our country's media:

After retiring from a state ranch where he worked for more than 30 years, Mr Hernandez decided he wanted to remain busy and useful. He acquired the Santa Isabel Farm in the tobacco-growing region of western Pinar del Rio province, about 125 miles west of Havana.

Amid the rolling hills surrounded by towering palm trees, Mr Hernandez worked with local agricultural labourers to plant food crops. Then he decided to try breeding miniature cows. By his own account, there was nothing notably scientific about his attempts. He simply began with a tiny bull, which neighbours had ridiculed because of its size, and mated it with the smallest cows he could find.

With a speed which cattle-breeding specialists and geneticists around the world might envy, he claims that, five years on, he has reached his objective - a herd of cows that reach no higher than his waist. He says his success has ranchers throughout the area pursuing breeding experiments to come up with their own tiny cows, while he is training local teenagers to help care for the little animals.

"Now the neighbours are excited by the idea," he said.
(snip)

When you start reading more about Cuban life you will start seeing all kinds of things which don't fit the picture of Cuban life we've been fed.

It's appropriate to wonder why we have been told Cubans are not allowed to own property.... Interesting, isn't it?


Pinar del Rio Province, westernmost province
in Cuba, not far from Havana.

[Dover]

8. What beautiful landscape.....like a painting. Never have seen

any pictures of the terrain. Just some shots of the cities.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Aren't those hills unusual? They remind one of photos of China

It's hard to imagine there are hills like this, and mountains like the Sierra Maestra in Cuba, only 90 miles away from a VERY flat state in the U.S.

I'm not sure there's even one hill anywhere in Florida! Easy to see why some of the "exiles" who moved away have felt so tied to their homeland. It's truly beautiful.

Also, it boasts some rare species of flora and fauna, including the world's smallest frog. I think I've read they even have crocodiles (not aligators like Florida) in Cuba. Oh, yeah. They've discovered a fascinating ant-eating critter, like some small opposum or something, no one has ever seen before.

The ocean around attracts tons of deep sea divers, as well as scuba divers from all over the world. It's supposed to be extremely interesting, including the appearance of a sunken city at a vast depth which National Geographic has gone to study, which has also been the object of scrutiny of some Russians who remained to study these structures.

Posted on Fri, Oct. 11, 2002

City-like shape a sunken mystery
It may not be Atlantis, but it's big, 2,000 feet down and not natural

KEVIN SULLIVAN
Washington Post


HAVANA - The images appear slowly on the video screen, like ghosts from the ocean floor. The videotape, made by an unmanned submarine, shows massive stones in oddly symmetrical square and pyramid shapes in the deep-sea darkness.

Sonar images taken from a research ship 2,000 feet above are even more puzzling.

They show that the smooth, white stones are laid out in a geometric pattern. The images look like fragments of a city, in a place where nothing man-made should exist, spanning nearly eight square miles of a deep-ocean plain off Cuba's western tip.

"What we have here is a mystery," said Paul Weinzweig, of Advanced Digital Communications, a Canadian company that is mapping the ocean bottom of Cuba's territorial waters under contract with the government of President Fidel Castro.

"Nature couldn't have built anything so symmetrical," Weinzweig said, running his finger over sonar printouts aboard his ship, tied up at a wharf in Havana harbor. "This isn't natural, but we don't know what it is."
(snip/...)

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/4259131.htm
(Charlotte Observer requires free registration)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Scientists Probe 'Sunken City' Civilization in Cuba
HAVANA, Cuba

Scientific investigators said that they hope to better determine later this year if an unusual rock formation deep off Cuba's coast could be a sunken city from a previously unknown ancient civilization.
"These are extremely peculiar structures... They have captured all our imagination," Cuban geologist Manuel Iturralde said at a conference after a week on a boat over the site.
"If I had to explain this geologically, I would have a hard time," he told
reporters later, saying examination of rock samples due to be collected in a few months should shed further light on the formation off the Guanahacabibes Peninsula on Cuba's western tip.
Iturralde, research director of Cuba's Natural History Museum, has joined Canadian exploration company Advanced Digital Communications (ADC) in efforts to solve the mystery of the smooth, geometrically shaped, granite like rocks. They are laid out in structures resembling pyramids, roads and other structures at more than 600 meters deep (2,000 feet) in a 20 km square (73/4 mile square) area.
ADC has suggested they might belong to a civilization that colonized the American continent thousands of years ago, possibly sitting on an island that was sunk to great depths by cataclysmic earth movement such as an earthquake.
(snip/...)

http://www.centralamericaweekly.net/188/english/science.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks for the photo of the small cattle critter. I was really trying to form a mental image of what it should look like. Very beautiful. Have never even heard of these beasties.

[MisterP]

24. Cuba is more igneous than Florida: it formed from the Caribbean Plate

in a similar way as Japan formed; Florida is older, and used to hang in the cleft when Africa and South America were Gondwana, until North America ran into it mebbe 320 million years ago. Or when God created it to look that way, to test our faith, like Jack Chick thinks.
http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/platetec/plhist94.htm
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/anim1.html

[lfairban]

26. The highest point in Florida is a hill top.

It is about 50 mi. south of Orlando. There was a tower built on it, I believe it is called Brock Tower or something.

[karlrschneider]

28. It's the Bock tower near Lake Wales if I recall correctly, but that's not

the highest part of FL...that's north of Tallahassee near the Alabama border, about 340 feet above MSL I think.

[Dover]

27. I remember reading about the 'sunken city', but haven't heard a peep

since then (almost 2 years ago?). Why would it take so long to at least determine if it was manmade?

[Judi Lynn]

31. They really sounded serious when we first heard about it....

.....LOST CITY OFF WESTERN CUBA?

Most intriguingly, researchers using sonar equipment have discovered, at a depth of about 2,200 feet, a huge land plateau with clear images of what appears to be urban development partly covered by sand. From above, the shapes resemble pyramids, roads and buildings.

ADC is excited but reluctant to speculate until a joint investigation with the Cuban Academy of Sciences and the U.S. National Geographic (news - web sites) Society takes place early this summer.

``It is stunning. What we see in our high-resolution sonar images are limitless, rolling, white sand plains and, in the middle of this beautiful white sand, there are clear manmade large-size architectural designs. It looks like when you fly over an urban development in a plane and you see highways, tunnels and buildings,'' Zelitsky said.

``We don't know what it is and we don't have the videotaped evidence of this yet, but we do not believe that nature is capable of producing planned symmetrical architecture, unless it is a miracle,'' she added in an interview at her office at Tarara, along the coast east of Havana.
(snip)

It could be politics getting in the way of our hearing more about this:

U.S. COMPANIES BARRED BY EMBARGO

American companies are prohibited from participating by the long-running U.S. embargo on the Communist-run island.

The rush of interest in Cuba's seas is due in part to the Castro government's recognition that it does not have the money or technology to carry out systematic exploration by itself, though it does have excellent divers.

``As you know, we have financing problems. This is a very expensive activity. They give us technology and financing. We provide historical and ocean expertise,'' Eddy Fernandez, vice president of Geomar, said.
(snip)

http://www.cyberspaceorbit.com/cuba_underwater.html

Who DOESN'T find the idea of uncovering new old cities fascinating almost beyond endurance, anyway? This one sounds like a very expensive one to explore, however, being over 2000 feet deep. Yikes.

.

[Dover]

7. Here's a picture >>>

This is the American ranch, named Pillards, mentioned in the article:



http://www.miniaturebull.com/Forsale.html

[Jacobin]

14. awesome

great idea.

I want one.

[K. F. Gibbons]

19. thats a huge guy,, and look how big the kid is , these people are giants

[mrbill]

9. wasn't this an episode of "miami vice"

Crockett and Tubbs were on the trail of a container of sperm developed in Cuba for the breeding of tiny cows.

Some neferious group had stolen the container and were trying to sell the tiny cow sperm on the black market. Fidel was pissed.

Izzie tried to broker a deal with the Saudis. One of the selling points was they don't eat much grass.

Some guy who was from Australia or Texas slicked them all and flew off with the briefcase full of cash.

Can't remember what happened to the container of tiny cow sperm.

[TexasBushwhacker]

15. Tiny cow sperm?

So my question is, are "tiny cow sperm" tinier than regular cow sperm?

[blindpig]

11. there's much to admire in Cuba

The Cuban people have been through a lot since 1994. The loss of their benefactor coupled with the increasingly unwise and immoral policies of the US has inspired much innovation. Their handling of the severe energy crisis imposed upon them is an inspiration to anyone considering the implications of Peak Oil. They will be ready, we will not.

[WVhill]

20. The Cubans out of necessity have developed sustainable agriculture.

There's been a few articles here and there. For all those that say our way of life will end when the oil starts to run out, take a look at Cuba.

[mom cat]

13. Such a Mooooooooving story. Thanks!

:bounce::bounce::toast::toast::bounce::bounce:

[Ravy]

16. How long before they re-veal their technology? (n/t)

[snowFLAKE]

30. This is definitely not the thread

For Anyone trying to STEER clear of stupid puns . . .

[K. F. Gibbons]

18. must......have.......picture.....

[Iceburg]

22. Here's another pic

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5933388/

[Almost_there]

23. THIS is where White Castle gets their burgers!

Ahh, So THIS is where the delicious Belly Bombers come from, huh? Tiny burgers come from tiny cows! It all makes sense.

Actually, this isn't really all that far fetched, the problem that I would think would be in genetic inbreeding further down the road, along with the animals being VERY prone to short lives and disease, since you are essentially taking a weaker and smaller animal and making it the dominant trait. Instead of the strongest and best, they have sort of worked the opposite end.

But, if it works, it works. Go for it.

Oh, plus a "normal" cow weighing about 800 pounds "deposits" about 100 pounds of cow patties and cow rain a day, call it 10% of its body mass for ease. These "little guys" would still "produce" about 10% of their body weight in waste, much more than a human or other animals. Farm animals make LOTS of poop. Even a 150 pound cow would poop about 20 pounds a DAY. A 150 pound Rottweiller might leave 3 or 4 pounds.

~Almost

On edit: removed run on mish mosh sentance

[oneighty]

25. Oh my!

What a poopie thing to be saying.

180

[this_side_up]

29. does anyone know

how the Cuban cattle compare to
the Dexter?

http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/cattle/dexter/