It is funny how people are converting to the small cattle that were created in the mid 20th century for a very specific purpose and almost killed the Angus and Her ford breeds in England.

Originally in the 1800's to about WWI, the Angus and Herefords were not much smaller than they are now. More of the fat stock side than the lean that is preferred now, but just as large. This was because the beef was sold to large family estates in England that had many people working on them and large families to feed. Starting around the WWI point, the cattle started getting smaller. Two reasons for this were the smaller family sizes and the import of beef from South America and later Australia. On these import cattle, the carcass had to be able to hang between the decks of the ships for the three week trip to England. The animals proceeded to shrink though the years until they resulted in the "belt buckle cattle" of the mid 1960's. At his point, the Continental European breeds became the main influence because they could make a decent size carcass that was lean. The Angus breed started to get bigger by the gamble of a few breeders that imported the largest bulls they could from the US and Canada to revive the breed in England. Today the breed is back up to a normal size and doing better because they can finish out of grass instead of having to be grain fed like the Continental breeds.

It will be hard to make up any feed efficiency with the prices charged for breeding stock for these re-miniaturized breeds. And if you ever have to sell them outside of the breeding market, it is very likely you will be clobbered. I saw a beautiful herd of Belted Galloways (another small English breed) sold at auction a couple months ago. They all went at canner prices of 30 to 50 cents a pound verses 90 cents to 1.10 a pound for standard Angus crosses.