so what about these animals.....

So what?
One thing about all our animals here at Middleground Farm is that they are used to being handled daily. Now I know it would be a lot easier to buy a big hay feeder, dump an 800 pound bale of hay in and forget it for a week or two; but that would not help me obtain one of the objectives of having good, registered miniature livestock, and that is the daily contact I feel is critical to raising the kind of stock that I desire, and, hopefully, others will as well.

Now that's not to say the babies are halter trained from birth and will lead sweetly onto a trailer.....but they are handled from the day they are born. They are used to human contact, human voices and hands; the daily routine of being fed, people moving in and around them, water tubs being filled, barns being cleaned and bedded. Come the dead of winter, they will follow me down through the snow covered pasture to the small ice covered stream and wait to drink while I break the ice with an ax (sometimes a sledge hammer!) The girls and I have played ring toss with the cows, throwing plastic bracelets at the cows horns, and trying to see how many Barbie dolls can "ride" a cow. Are we annoying or amusing to the animals? You may have to ask them yourselves.

My daughters were quite young when we got our miniature Herefords. They were never afraid of them. They were right there in the barn with the new born calves, the unconcerned momma cows right there with them. Even the bulls were of no great concern to them as we walked the pastures to seed or tend fence.

For those of you who have purchased stock from us, I think pictures say a thousand words.....I hope everyone who has bought animals from us enjoys them as much as we have!