Dexter Cattle For Sale Discussion Board

I think it's a good thing to split up the breed standard for shorts and non-shorts on the point of size. (for our Society Holland Dexter). At this moment the standard is 38 - 44 inch for both.
My question is: what should be the measurements for shorts and non-shorts. Please use the poll and reply if you want to say more about this. First I will start with the cows.

I have given this some thought myself for some time, but find it very difficult to know what is best. It would perhaps be best to have some work done measuring short cows and their long offspring, and vice versa, but obviously would take considerable time and effort to get meaningful figures. Another problem is at what age do we measure, because a cow keeps on growing for some considerable time, during which she may well have produced calves, Maybe there is some formula we could use on new born calves to estimate what their adult height will be. I know that with horses there are various methods of doing this which are reasonably accurate. And a human is exactly have adult height at the age of 2.5yrs.

In 2011 I measured all my cows aged 3 or over,

42.5 - 1
40.5 - 1
40 - 2
39 - 1
38.5 - 2
38 - 3
37.5 - 2
37 - 1
34.5 - 1

None of these are carrying the chondrodysplasia gene. I have seen herds with a number of carrier cows which although I have not seen them measured I suspect would be hitting the upper height of 44" and the long cows of the same herd were most definitely a long way over height.

We should also look at weights, historically a dexter bull should be 900 lbs ie. 409kg.

The wording in the standard has changed as the years move on as well as the limits - it used to say such things as "Preferred height of cows between 38 and 44 inches" butnow the word "preferred" has got lost.

Duncan

Duncan MacIntyre wrote:We should also look at weights, historically a dexter bull should be 900 lbs ie. 409kg.

Interesting - my mature bulls tend to be around the 500kg mark in fit, not fat, condition, and we don't get the larger sized steers that other people seem to go for, I think anything over 180kg DW is too big.

guessing this could get complicated with large short legged and small long legged animals overlapping height wise, though not in profile.

when we have visitors its often easiest to explain which are short and long legged by looking at young calves in profile, as though different ages but the same height the body depth/length and amount of grass seen below them gives it away.

A few years ago a couple of show bulls were weighed unofficially, they were around 580/610 kg well above the once suggested breed standard weights, but these were show bulls with plenty of cover.