Dexter Cattle For Sale Discussion Board

Hi All,

After a shaky start I'm on at last. I have been keeping Dexters for a few years now and am expecting my second batch of calves this spring/summer so am a little way off where I would like to be but I suppose I am a born worrier, probably enhanced by the number of Dexter keepers I have met who are selling off their stock for a song because they hadn't planned ahead re marketing. I have sold a few calves on to smallholders and also sold a couple of OTM cows as boxed meat but price to hassel factor means I don't want to sell to many that way, besides I am hoping that I can get up to approx 10 to 15 calves a year and only have a limited market to sell to. So my question is how do I go about finding a reliable outlet for my beef. Any suggestions would be welcome please. I am in the process of changing my bull to a Traditional Hereford to put to my Dexter heifers to produce a bigger carcass, so may either take him to be boxed up or sell him on. I am in South Lincolnshire if anyone knows of outlets down this way.

Personally from experience I have sold yearlings, in calf heifers, cows with calf at foot..... I find the best return to be meat in the box. Before Christmas I slaughtered two steers and a heifer and cleared £900 after killing and butchering costs on average each animal. Maybe I am lucky with customers, but that is mostly word of mouth, and often when someone buys a box one time, a friend wants a box as well as them the next time. I do not know if this will last but it is working well at the moment.

I was even having my hair cut in the barbers the day after I sent them to slaughter. He said he would try a box, I have been back in and he said it was amazing and his mum and his sister want a box each too next time. These are 15kg boxes.

It is a stressful time delivering/collecting etc but I have not seen any amazing returns by selling any other way. I do not show and therefore perhaps not recognised to be able to charge too much for live animals. I am afraid I advertise my heifers now for sale at a year to 18 months old and then they will go for meat if not sold.

Mark

Hello fdb and welcome,

I'll second what Mark says. If you're doing relatively small amounts, then a box scheme could work well although they do tend to start of well and then die off according to our experience and what others have said. We used to do one, and even years ago we would get £1,000+ for a typical Dexter in boxes (and that would be maybe to £1,500 now?), minus costs of course. But we gave it up because it was getting too much as well as running the farm. So we went down the butcher route instead, selling via TBMM and other butchers. Much easier for us to do numbers and cut out all the additional work.

If you want to do more selling direct, then I'd say you need to sell cuts, i.e. exactly what the customer wants, go to markets etc. People get fed up with buying boxes with say brisket in etc when all they want is steaks, or the other way round.

If you've got numbers, then butchers might be best. We get around £700-900 for a carcass and only have the delivery of the live animal to the abattoir. We're crossing with Angus and have 50/50 and also some 7% Dexter / 25% Angus arriving soon, hopefully. As you say with the Hereford, they have a better shape and are more of a butchers carcass (more of the expensive cuts), but they are still quite small.

There is a premium price for pure Dexter with TBMM but in practice, the prices are so high at the moment, that butchers we know will not pay it. It's a premium of top of what is already a premium price. In fact, we rarely charge for the premium and just sell at the normal market price unless that is low, then we want the premium.

We also sell livestock but to get value out of livestock is much harder. I get asked for prices for heifers and always say the base line is what I would get from the butcher which is usually £700+ and £900+ for a cross. There are people who will pay that, but not many IME! There are a lot more people who will pay less for weaner, but I don't see the point in selling at that age. You've done all the work and all they need is to be fed for another year and you have a full-sized, valuable animal, slaughtered or alive.

PS. I have looked at the TBMM site and couldn't find a list of butchers, or on the RBST site either. But probably looking in the wrong place! There certainly used to be a list.

There is also the National Dexter Beef network for pedigree animals but I don't know anything about it.

Thank you both for your very interesting replies, support when starting up is always much appreciated. Re the Hereford cross, I have a h x d cross from one of my dexter cows it is huge and only 6 months old so fingers crossed it keeps going. I have a few small dexters I want to keep as they were my first 2 animals so I want to try to ensure a bigger carcass from their offspring. Clive can you tell me what TBMM stands for please.

Thanks

I would not be keen to put a hereford over dexter heifers unless your heifers are outsized dexters. On cows, yes as long as they are at the upper end of dexter size.

Duncan

I'll second Duncan. I use an easy-calving Angus on Dexter cows and whilst I haven't had a problem, it is nevertheless on the limit to my mind, and given the choice I would use something a bit smaller. I accidentally put my Angus to 4 heifers a couple of years ago, and one quite big heifer had a big calf, backwards. The other three were OK as were all the cows. I suppose if you're used to calving BB's, then it wouldn't be an issue, but if you're looking for fairly easy-calving I'd stick to good-sized Dexter cows only. The taller (relatively speaking), more un-Dexterlike type seem to cope best IMO. Me and others who cross that I know, never use short-leg Dexters either.

Locally reared Dexter beef - there's nothing else to beat it. We've worked damned hard promoting our own beef and have a number of diverse customers. Look for every opportunity - last week I was walking past a coffee house and noticed they were advertising roast lamb - a new idea for them selling Sunday roasts. I popped in, introduced myself and we now have a new customer who apparently always chooses our Dexter beef at one of the North Cotswolds favourite pubs, who take a whole Dexter every four weeks and it really is in demand there.

If we were crossing I am afraid we would not have any of our chefs, butchers or private customers. In the current climate, they're looking for something different - local,traditionally reared and that all important provinence and consistency in the beef.

There's not an easy option for selling and promoting your own Dexter beef, but once you're known in an area, it does get easier. We work with our customers and do not dictate what they have got to have, hence our reason for having a number of different outlets, but it is surprising how they can be encouraged to take on more beef. One pub didn't take the diced stew, so I suggested to the chef he may prefer to have it left whole and has been having it this way for over three years now.

We have approached many chefs who would like to take on the beef, but the proprietors don't wish to pay the price or they only want the steaks, so we are not always successful. It has taken many years of hard work building up our reputation.

Dexter beef does not belong in every 'eating place' - it deserves to be sold to those who appreciate really good food.

I'm not against crossing and if you have a market for the product and it suits your way of life OK, but having farmed a commercial AAX suckling herd and being at the mercy of market forces we would not go down that route again. Great whilst prices are high in the commercial market, but farming does tend to have too many 'ups and downs' in all sectors, especially when disease strikes.

With our Dexters we have a robust system in place which certainly works for us.

There are plenty of breeders and the National Dexter Beef Network committee who would be able to give really good sound advice, but at the end of the day breeders really do need to get out there and promote their own beef, there's no-one else who can actually do it for you.

Best wishes

Alison Kirk
Boram Dexters