01/15/2025
THIS!!!
Chondrodysplasia isn’t all it’s cracked out to be, in fact… there’s lots of negatives that come with it.
-Ever heard the term bulldog syndrome, or bulldog calf? It’s heartbreaking. (Look it up at your own risk)
- chondrodysplasia can come with lots of health issues such as osteoarthritis, osteochondrosis, and osteochondritis. Chondrodysplasia is actually a disease of the cartilage and bone that causes deformities.
-a chondro will never be purebred, chondro comes from being crossed.
-Chondro does NOT mean micro. Chondro + animals can actually be way larger than non chondro miniatures. Most times, unless properly bred down to be smaller, (which takes YEARS of work) chondro cattle often have the same body length as a full size cow, same size head as a full size cow, on short stubby little legs. This is painful for the animal when they have a full size body on mini little legs. This is where the health issues come into play.
There are some genuine breeders out there who have bred their chondros to be smaller bodied over years of selective breeding, on the stubby little legs and this is where the chondro breeding becomes more ethical to the animal.
-Chondro + animals can have shorter lifespans, and less quality of life due to the health issues that run with the gene.
-An animal can be a carrier for chondrodysplasia without showing any of the defects, thus a small calf when born that grows to be full size later on.
-cattle with chondrodysplasia can require extra work and special handling.
-Female chondrodysplastic animals have shrunken frames that can have difficulties delivering normal sized calves. 50% of their calves will be normal, non-chondrodysplasia calves, and their normal size could pose a risk to the dwarf mother.
-Animals with chondrodysplasia defects have weak joints that require special management. Allowing animals with chondrodysplasia to run with normal animals, can lead to worn out joints and early arthritis problems. Many breeders keep their chondrodysplastic Animals, separated from their normal healthy Animals.
-Male and female chondrodysplastic Cattle must be kept separated from each other to keep them from breeding together and producing highly deformed dead calves. If allowed to breed with each other, a percentage of calves will be born horribly disfigured and dead.
-If you have any chondrodysplasia genes on your farm, it takes a ton of effort and is nearly impossible to keep two chondrodysplastic animals from breeding together in the long run. Chondrodysplastic bulls can jump fences. Chondrodysplastic bulls can breed their young chondrodysplastic daughters at very young ages. Young chondrodysplastic bull calves at very young ages, can breed their chondrodysplastic mothers and siblings.
Many Miniature livestock breeders own chondro + animals, but many of those same breeders will tell you their non chondro, mini and midsize breeding stock are still their favorites for this reason.
With a chondro animal, you never truly know what size it is going to be until it is fully grown, and highland cattle can grow up to ages of 5 years old.
If you are planning on getting a chondro + animal, unless the breeders have years in experience breeding down the size of their animals, and breeding up the genetics of the animal that has been crossed into the chondro gene, expect to have the opposite results of what you’ve been told.
There’s lots of misconceptions in the miniature industry… there’s more than a handful of breeders that will have a small calf born, and when they sell it they label it as a miniature only for the buyer to realize later on down the road that this cow is midsize and up… do your research on your breeders, go through their pages, ask all the questions, go to their farms and look at their stock, protect yourselves from falling into the black market of the mini world. Not all breeders are honest and just looking to make a dollar.
You can generally tell just by looking at an animal the kind of quality that has been bred back into it… however for the newbies looking to get into this world, do your research, and a lot of it or you may fall victim to some icky genetics, problems, and you may very well buy a full size cow that’s just low birthweight.
Here’s a prime example of unethical miniature sellers:
We recently had a customer buy 2 of our trained steers… most of us have seen those steers in person… they weren’t full size, they weren’t mini, they were midsize…
The breeder that bought these two steers from us turned right back around and listed them on the internet for sale, as “TRUE MINIATURES” and are up selling them for a higher price…
Now the people who know better in the industry aren’t gonna go buy those two steers just out of the sheer fact they can tell they are not miniature just by looking at them.
But the person who is gonna buy them is going to be a newbie, someone who doesn’t know what to look for, and they’re gonna pay an overpriced amount for those two steers that we had truthfully sold, for an honest price as midsize. Then that said buyer that falls into the loophole is going to go around telling everyone else that those steers are MINIS when they’re not. Continuing the wildfire of spreading false narratives and misinformation on true miniatures.
And let’s remember too, JUST BECAUSE AN ANIMAL IS SMALL DOES NOT MEAN IT WILL PRODUCE QUALITY OFFSPRING. Focus on quality over quantity… many new breeders see something small, they buy it, they cross it with whatever else is small, and you get a half a** calf out of it.
Protect yourself and do your research.
Properly bred chondros and minis are NOT cheap, and you can see the quality they are by knowing what to look for. Ex: bone structure… does it have a nice stocky build? The hair on the parents, the hair on the animal itself, the temperament, the facial structure… there’s SO MANY FACTORS that you have to look at to make sure you are choosing a quality animal that will give you quality offspring.
And no, We don’t hate chondro, we love chondro also… we hate the false narratives that have been created in terms of it and the glamorization that has been created with poor genetics in minis.
We will always prefer pure blooded animals that have been properly bred down in size over years of proper genetic selecting, but we have fun with our chondros and crosses too. Just remember… make sure you’re buying quality… not quantity.
-thanks for coming to my Ted talk. 🫶🏽
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