We are Hans and Sheril Peterson, and have a small farm where we raise Irish Dexter and Miniature Scottish Highland cattle. Sheril is a middle school math teacher, and Hans has a business manufacturing custom windows for high end residential and commercial high rise buildings.
Nearly 20 years ago we started our fold of Highland cattle as a hobby, when we saw two red Highland cows for sale at a farm where we purchased our Dexter bull. Hans fell in love with the look of the Highland breed. Sheril wanted the Dexters for their size, so Hans proposed that we look for the smallest possible Highlands we could find and use selective breeding to make them even smaller.
Our Dexter bull was waist high, as he was a carrier of chondrodysplasia, which is the dwarf gene in Dexters.
We had three main criteria in our selection of our foundation Highlands:
1)They had to have an exceptional hair coat, short muzzle and wide round face.
2)Good overall conformation, legs, feet, and sound udder.
3)A good temperament that would allow us to handle them easily.
Our goal was to downsize the Highlands to approximately the Dexter size.