Rare Livestock Offers Alternatives

If some of these animals were a salamander or fish government officials would be beside themselves to save them...extinction is forever. If they were museum artifacts some would be considered priceless. Instead of CONSERVING these animals and preserving them on the small farm habitats they were developed for, American legislators via the National Animal Identification System will eliminate them. Some of these animals the US is the only place in the world they exist - this means the end of several breeds. 

America's food supply is at risk - over 90% of dairy cattle are the Holstein breed, bred for confinement production on a high concentrate diet and their ability to produce large amounts of milk. This they do well - so well that many other breeds have been all but eliminated. In the early 1960s - within the lifetime of many readers - the Guernsey was a common site...a breed second only to the Holstein, and a breed that produced such a quality of milk there was a Guernsey brand of milk. Today the gold and white Guernsey cow is held in the hands of a relative few breeders. Their ability to produce milk on grass is no longer valued over the quantity and confinement abilities of the Holstein. What if the narrow genetic base of the Holstein is aflicted with a disease? What if in those large, volume in few areas confinement become targets for terrorism? What if by necessity we HAD to return to a grass based system? The Guernsey, Ayrshire, Brown Swiss, Milking Shorthorn all perform very well in those conditions they were developed for. The excellent grazers also include the critically endangered Dutch Belted and milking Devon - both down to less than 2,000 globally.