Have had a couple of what I called lowlines over the years. Maybe they were "stunted" black angus, but they were a bit smaller; SHORTER definitely, and the vet just looked at me when I got this last one and said are you serious? I used a normal black angus bull on them and got satisfactory calves that grew well. This last one weaned calves off that were nearly as tall as her at 7 months old. Weighed right in with the rest. I have kept several of her heifers because I liked the way they are built. She had some age and finally came up open and I shipped her. Have 2 daughters, 1 granddaughter in the herd, and a young heifer.
If you do alot of research on the "lowlines" you will see that they were developed from smaller angus and then linebred to develop them further. They are not a true miniature like some of the "mini" breeds, and do not have as many breeding problems as true mini breeds.
I have no experience with them being crossed with a brahma bull. But I wouldn't hesitate to buy some more around here, if they were cheap enough, breed them to our angus and raise calves on them. They will eat less than a full size angus, mine kept their weight well, and I didn't see where the calves were that terribly "smaller".
The old "true angus" that was being shown in the 50's were short legged, squat blocky things barely up to a man's belt....
My grandfather said that long legs only meant they had to reach further down to get the grass and you can't eat the legs... he was talking about the leg below the knee or hock.
Alacowman is right though, it is a buyers market right now, so there are decent bargains to be found if you are looking for cows. We are seeing them for little more than cull cow pound price here. I think that will hold at least through to the first of the year. Some will depend on the winter, and the water/drought situation, and some on this "movement" to get the packers from being able to continually rip off the producers..... We will see.
Slaughter numbers on heifers are up so not as many retained as replacements, so many were lost in the flooding in the plains states so subsequent loss of calves and replacement heifers from them too. Farmers/ranchers are going out as we all age, and the younger generation is crazy to take over farms in areas where they CAN NOT make a living.
We have cut back for several reasons, but one is dealing with owners on rents, and poor fences and them thinking we are going to do all this work to give them tax breaks on their land, and they still want way too much for the rent; plus some places being sold out. Some of us are tired of not being able to just pay the bills off the cows, keeping "regular" jobs to do that. We just want them to not cost us money..... not make a big profit, but to pay their own way and the rents and such.