November 12, 2013: Mini farm!

[Undertoad]

Yes, it's beasts about a third their normal size at Tanglewood Farm in northern Georgia, where Michelle Bolt is raising tiny versions of livestock.

Well maybe "raising" is not the right word.



Miniature horses, alpaca, goats, chicken...

This is genetic engineering of animals, strictly speaking, but genetic engineering the old-fashioned way, by breeding for certain traits. Farmers have always tried to breed the best animals for whatever purposes they may have; this is just breeding in a different direction.

After all, there are hundreds of dog breeds, but all of them are of the same subspecies, Canis lupus familiari. There was enough genetic material in the original "dog" to eventually produce both the Chihuahua and the Great Dane.

So Bolt's Jersey cow is weighing in at 700 pounds while the "normal" Jersey cow is 2000. That's not so much range. We need a cow the size of a housecat. That would be really impressive.



In fact, the article suggests that these minis are really "actual size":

While some miniature breeds were selectively bred to be tiny for novelty or manageability, many of them, including mini Jersey cows, Cheviot sheep and Bolt’s Southdown sheep aren’t really miniature, but original. Before coming to the New World, cows and sheep were much smaller than the feedlot breeds we associate with our hamburgers and milk cartons. Weaver’s Cheviots are the un-improved, old-style Scottish border sheep. Same goes for tiny Bantam chickens, which are said to have originated in Asia.

Right, because they've been bred to produce more meat, more milk, more wool, etc. This only means that, again, there's enough genetic kit to breed them to be much, much smaller even than they are in this mini version. Cat-sized cows! We can do this, people!

On the other hand, the smaller version is not "unnatural"; it's not like cows, if they were allowed to breed freely, would automatically return to their smaller version. White people, who evolved to northern climates over tens of thousands of years, do not "return" to black in a few generations if they decide to live in Africa. As animals, we too have bred; we too have changed; everything is what it is now, and that's just fine.