Guiness Book of World Records - Seeking Worlds Smallest cow

LISA · Post by **LISA** » Mon Jul 13, 2009 8:31 pm

I had a telephone conversation today from a gentleman from the Guiness book of records.We have many short legged Dexters but purposefully none this small.Can anyone out there help him? Obviously it needs to be an adult animal. This is what the gentleman has emailed me:-
Guinness World Records has an open category for the ‘Smallest Cow – Living’. We know that a Dexter cow would be the breed but we would like to discover the actual cow itself. It would have to be an adult Dexter cow (ideal minimum 3 years old) and as a guide the height at the hip would ideally be 35 inches or less. If anyone has such a cow please provide a photo and ideally a vet’s certificate declaring age and height to me at address below and we will investigate further with a view to it making a major appearance in the Guinness World Records 2011 book (published September 2010) and the subsequent publicity that surrounds it.

Any correspondence on this matter should be sent to me at:

michael.whitty@guinnessworldrecords.com

Post by **Mark Bowles** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 7:46 am

If people could pass this around and we could come up with an animal that qualifies then it would be really good promotion, so ask around.

Louisa Gidney · Post by **Louisa Gidney** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 9:48 am

If you put dwarf cattle into Google Images (as I happened to do yesterday lunchtime...), there's an Indian cow that is absolutely tiny. It's standing next to a normal cow & at first sight looks like a calf but it is a miniature adult cow. Most attractive. There's also 2 dwarf sacred cattle in a marriage ceremony, my Dexters would have eaten the garlands! I shall have a go at measuring my short cows at the w/e as I would estimate they are c.36" but might be a shade shorter.

Broomcroft · Post by **Broomcroft** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 6:46 pm

Is this the one you mean?

Saffy · Post by **Saffy** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 6:55 pm

I have seen this one before Clive, now isn't there something strange about steers carrying on growing or the likes and he is about 6 or 7 years old?

Stephanie

Louisa Gidney · Post by **Louisa Gidney** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 10:29 am

If you castrate bull calves very young, then they never get the male hormones that stop growth and initiate puberty. There is a lot of literature on this of interest to archaeology, as we estimate slaughter cohort age from the fusion of the bones but these early castrates have very delayed fusion. This increase in size is linked with debate on what constitutes improvement, generally a shorthand assumption that bigger is better. Change in age of castration was linked to the demise of plough oxen, which were steered at 2-3 years old, so most of the bones morphologically male.
I can bore for Britain on this sort of topic but if anyone does want more info, I can supply it.

Broomcroft · Post by **Broomcroft** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 6:41 pm

Louisa - Didn't you say that you kept a dexter steer till he was 8 or so and he grew very big? How big was he? or how much more did he grow beyond 3 years compared to others?

I wonder how they handle that dairy steer. If you look at the fence behind, he could step over it :D

Edited By Broomcroft on 1247679802

Louisa Gidney · Post by **Louisa Gidney** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 5:36 pm

Broomcroft, my oxen were 11 years old when they went on OTMS and were still growing. Shoulder height about 5ft then. Unfortunately, the last pictures of them were taken on video film, which has perished. Blasted modern technology, none of that trouble with glass plates, grump. I think there is a photo of them on the Rent a Peasant website, on the artefacts/horn page. When I get round to the Ox chapter of the thesis, I will put together a sequence of photos of them as they got older. I've certainly got a photo of the spare ox, who went in the freezer at 3.5 years, next to & considerably taller than the non-short bull Aiskew Juglans Nigra. I'm gradually getting negs of old photos of the herd digitised but it is quite expensive.

Broomcroft · Post by **Broomcroft** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 5:59 pm

I've actually got a Nikon neg scanner for old slides and 35mm negs, it does a fantastic job, but I haven't got a PC any more and it won't work on my Mac! I must get it working because I want to scan negs as well and it was an expensive and extremely useful machine.

Edited By Broomcroft on 1247763669