BARNET, Vt. (AP) – Three Cuban officials circled around four young Jersey heifers inside a barn at the top of a steep, winding dirt road in Vermont, more than 2,000 miles away from home.

They sized up the tawny animals for their weight, age and progress of their pregnancies. They looked at their heads, rumps and ribs. They looked for abnormalities.

Despite a wart on the face of one heifer, a viral disease that is easily removed, the Cubans were impressed.

“Beautiful animals,” cattle expert Vladimir Martinez Martinez told farmers William and Gwen Pearl on Wednesday. “And young, very young.”

The group then loaded back into a van for a ride over the hill to a farm in Peacham where 10 Holsteins were waiting.

The Cuban delegation is visiting farms in Vermont this week shopping for cattle. The group – a cattle expert, veterinarian, and representative from an import agency – is inspecting animals that the Brattleboro-based Holstein Association already has lined up for them to buy. They plan to purchase 500 cattle from Vermont, Maine and Pennsylvania.

“So far we’ve been seeing animals with good quality, very fine, we are pretty satisfied,” said Tatiana Taboada Gonzalez of Alimport, the Cuban import agency.

The Cubans hope to improve the genetic composition of their herds and increase the number of cattle with a goal of becoming self sufficient in milk production, Gonzalez said.

Last fall Vermont signed a contract at Havana’s annual trade fair to sell purebred heifers to Cuba.

“We’ve got good genetics here, we’ve got good quality cattle, they’re hardy cattle,” state Veterinarian Kerry Rood said Wednesday. “They’re cattle that have been bred over the years for confirmation of milk production. We also have a disease status in our state that is favorable. Our state is really stringent on keeping certain diseases out than other states have.”

The Pearls expected to get $1,900 for each of the four heifers.

After the animals are quarantined for two weeks they will be shipped to Cuba from Philadelphia by the end of July, said Florida cattle dealer John Parke Wright IV, who is arranging the deal.

The cattle will take time to get used to the tropical climate and will be less productive at first.

“They have to go through a process to acclimate to the Cuban conditions, not just because of the weather but also because we will be working them out into the pasture. They would probably have some grain as well. They will change,” Gonzalez said.

“So far we have been bringing animals to Cuba out of the U.S. since 2003,” she said. “We have had some Jerseys and some Holsteins. They have been doing well. They actually have been able to adapt to our conditions and they’re producing well.”

In the past two years, Cuba has imported $1.4 billion in agricultural products from the United States, Wright said.

Food, agricultural products and medical supplies are the only items exempt from the 43-year-old U.S. trade embargo with the Caribbean nation of 11.3 million people.

Wright said he hoped the cattle imports would help to restore two-way trade between Cuba and the United States.

“These cows have a special meaning in this business,” he said.

AP-ES-06-15-05 1546EDT