Usually people tend to use dogs, cats even fishes to be their pet at home. But if you live in the country side, or a deserted neighbourhood. On a large house, or just a huge backyard, you might want to consider having a mini cows as your pet. Miniature cows or just mini cows are one of cow breed that has average weight around 225 kilograms, and have half the size of full-size cows. They are suitable for people who like to have cows as their pet. But of course petting a mini cows comes with a challenge of difficulty, here are some tips of how to have a mini cows as your pet.
Find Good Breeder
The first thing you need to do is to find a good breeder to get your mini cows. There are few options of breeders, there is heritage breed where the mini cows comes from the true small breed. It means that they have a heritage line of small breed and meant to grow on small size. Then, there is a developed breed. That mean the cows have been purposely breed to a small size, usually it’s for commercial purpose since the real small heritage breed could come at some high price. The heritage breed actually are the best option to have a mini cow as your pet, but it could come a bit pricy than the other breed.
Having A Huge Backyard
As mention before, it will be suitable to have a mini cows if you have a huge backyard. Even they are mini in size, mini cows are still like to roam around and could not stay in stall all day long, Just like having a dog especially the husky breed. It means that you need to have a lot of space from them to roam around, if you interested in their wellbeing. Like any other pet animals, mini cows need a daily exercise and playtime to keep them happy and healthy.
Building A Shelter and Fences
Having mini cow as your pet doesn’t mean you could just easily put them in huge outdoor backyard. Building a good shelter is one of the requirements to care for your mini cows. A good mini cow shelter should been builds with wood and metal material. It should be a fully enclosed shelter, like a barn, it could function anytime they need shade and could comfortably stay in the shelter overnight. Mini cows are the target of many predator like coyotes or wolf, especially when they were young. Good shelter could give them the protection they need.
You need to build fences that strong enough to contain your mini cow, four or five strands of wire with star pickets and timber corner post will be strong enough to keep your mini cow in tack. Barbed wire is not recommended, because it will bring harm to your mini cow.
Get Them Companion
Mini cows or cows generally are herd animals, they could get lonely if you don’t give them any friends or companion. Mini cows could easily get stressed if they lonely and feel isolated. If you plan to own just one mini cow, you can get other animals as their companion such as horses, goats or maybe some chicken. If you have horses, make sure to introduce your mini cows slowly to them, pay close attention to them until they get use to each other presence and learn to get along. Because horses tend to hard accepting new comers, and they like to pick a fight with a non-horse companion.
Constant Interaction
Just like dogs or any other animals, in order to have a friendly and sweet pet you need to make your mini cow have regular human interaction. You might want to take them somewhere with a lot of people, in order to make them comfortable with other people presence. They would also become less defensive if they have enough human interaction. If you have mini cow as your pet, make sure to brush him, pet him and constantly touch his body in order for them to feel the interaction and love between both of you.
Your mini cow also love to be walk, you just put him on a leash and walk together with them in the morning or afternoon and they will be happy and even familiar with their area. Since they are smart, they will remember a lot of thing when you take them to walk. That is another fact to love about cows.
Be Aware of Flies
Be aware of flies, because flies could bring any disease and cause pinkeye to your mini cows. You need to keep them from flies by getting fly trap, or fly spray especially when it comes to fly season. Cows generally could also developed some lice, and mini cows are not an exception. You could treat them by spraying your mini cows with the fly spray any monitor them closely.
Feeding
Feeding mini cow is not that different from feeding regular cow, but usually pastures are the basic choice to feed your mini cow. Pasture are a mixture of different grasses, legumes and the other similar green stuff that grow on your yard. The greater variety of grasses and legumes, the better nutritional value that the pasture have for your mini cow. Before you get your mini cow, you should seek some professional advice how to have a good pasture in your backyard. Having a good pasture also one of the first thing to do if you want to start cattle farming.
Training
Much more like other animal especially dogs, your mini cow also need some training. They are one intelligent creatures, you can easily teach them some tricks like any other trained animals like dogs, cats even horses. Traditional reward-based training will work with your mini cow. You just give them a some treat for their reward if they successfully do some trick that you teach them, example teach them how to bow or even sing because naturally cows like to sing that is one of the 10 facts to love about cows.
Even though you want to raise them as a companion animal, but you could also milk them and even take their meat. They are quite the same with other beef cattle, except their miniature size. Ways to take care of them, even breed them is quite the same. But if you want to keep the special mini size, you just need to breed them with bull with small gene just like any other cows, a good gene comes from a good breeding.