2 Little Known Benefits of Mini Cows

Captain Jack with Pebbles and BamBam

Many of the benefits of having mini cows is obvious: help to keep tax agriculture status, provides home-grown beef or dairy, make wonderful, fuzzy pets, and there are two other reasons that I have been surprising to me and I wanted to share them.

This first is that they desensitize horses. My horses are fairly brave. Half of them have worked cattle, most play polo. They get hauled to many trails, farms and polo grounds. They’ve seen a lot, even drones and helicopters and not much seems to phase them. All of that said, the horses can still be silly little fools when something new comes around. Enter the mini cows. You’d think we brought gremlins onto the farm when we first brought the cows home and walked them around. Whether it was curiosity, fear or just general silly equine behavior, the horses spooked, ran, dodged, and snorted. They displayed all of the usual tom foolery associated with new things. They have since settled down, but the cows provide a consistent source of entertainment and spook factor. The cows run, buck, knock buckets around, moo and bellow. It’s a great, unpredictable source of desensitization on the farm. The horses have learned it’s not worth getting riled up over. It’s just Captain Jack Sparrow pushing the water tank.

If the desensitization factor isn’t enough, the other big reason mini cows are a great addition to your horse program is that they eat moldy hay. Nothing makes me madder than moldy hay. Rather, nothing used to make me madder than finding mold. Now, when we find a bad bale, we don’t throw it out, we throw it to the cows. The cows eat it and don’t seem to mind. Horses can’t digest moldy hay. It can make them terribly sick. Last week one of our BIG bales was moldy. That’s $150 worth of hay that would’ve been tossed in the compost pile, but instead, now I was able to feed it to the mini cows. They loved it. They didn’t mind that the hay was moldy. They are perfectly happy to clean up bad hay.

Let me know what fun, unexpected benefits you’ve received from your mini cows!