Cattle are becoming fashion accessories for semi-crunchy lifestylers.

For between £200 and £2,000, people can buy a cow that stands no taller than a large German shepherd dog, gives 16 pints of milk a day that can be drunk unpasteurised, keeps the grass “mown” and will be a family pet for years before ending up in the freezer.

The Dexter, a mountain breed from Ireland, is perfect for cattle-keeping on a small scale, but other breeds are being artificially created to compete with it, including the Mini-Hereford and the Lowline Angus, which has been developed by the Australian government to stand no more than 39in high but produce 70% of the steak of a cow twice its size.

Home on the range for the Farrant family is a detached house with a large garden on the outskirts of Ashford, Kent. Bernard Farrant and his wife Sue, both teachers, have bought four Dexters.

Actually, there is nothing new about miniature cattle. Nearly all breeds have miniature versions. Cattle are in some ways like dogs in that there is a very wide variation in breeds, though they are all still cattle.

The Dexter originated in the south of Ireland in the 1800s as an ideal “cottager’s cow”, producing enough milk for the house, and a calf a year.

Today’s mini-cattleman follows a similar pattern, choosing to keep a single “house cow”, collecting the milk each day and using artificial insemination to produce one calf annually for meat.

AI, and even embryo implant, are the key technologies that make this practical. When you have to keep and rely on bulls for natural breeding it all gets very much more complicated, as well as being less profitable since bulls are expensive to keep and not nearly as productive. The number of cows that a bull can service in the best breeding time window is low, but his semen can be extracted and used to service a great number.

There is a growing commercial market for miniatures too.

In America, small cow breeds such as the mini-Hereford are catching on among professional farmers keen to save money as the cost of feed skyrockets. These Herefords consume about a third less feed than normal cows and produce proportionately more beef for the amount of grain they eat.

It's true, the conversion efficiency of smaller cattle is higher. They produce more milk and meat for the same amount of feed. But there are some higher costs as well since it is necessary to handle more animals to get equivalent production, and there are practical problems in that animal handling equipment and facilities are scaled for larger animals. They are cheaper by the pound, but more expensive by the head since it takes more of them and the cost per unit is much the same.

There are marketing considerations as well. A miniature steak from a miniature steer is a hard sell in some places, but there is also a growing desire for smaller portions in our chubby world. It's not an insurmountable obstacle, but it is a different market and requires some clever presentation. Elf food, as some call it. Tiny portions for people who aren't really hungry because they don't have the high calorie needs of the more physically active working stiffs of yore is a type of conspicuous consumption and marketing efforts need to be sensitive to that. It hurts sales if the product is too cheap!

I've been considering raising miniatures for several years. The production numbers are compelling, but the marketing is daunting. Smart graziers have been doing something in between. They are importing genetics from grazing countries, such as New Zealand, to get somewhat smaller animals with good grazing traits: smaller frame, deep gut, large mouth, big haunches and good conversion efficiency for early maturation and fattening on a grass diet. In a sense, it's just old fashioned genetics from the pre-grain era, but the Kiwis have improved them further for an all pasture system.