Dexter Cattle For Sale Discussion Board

Interesting American article regarding dexters


https://wydaily.com/local-news/2019/04/ ... liamsburg/

This is a silly article. The red gene is already in thousands of US Dexter's. I've had hundreds of them.

No. It is not silly. Here is some US history as to color.

Original imports from Ireland and England to the USA arrived in the first two decades of the 1900’s. There were quite a few cattle registered as red. There were over 200 cattle imported.

By the late 1940’s we can only identify TWO cows that might have been carrying red recessive or dun.
The next cattle imported were in the mid 1950’s from England. These were all black cattle. They were from the Grinstead, Framfield, and Ratcliffe bloodlines, and were carrying DUN recessive in several instances.

ALL of these Dexters had traceable complete pedigrees to Ireland or England foundation. Some were foundation in the early imports.

In 1964 two cows from the Parndon herd were imported. Both black. One calved a black bull in the US while in quarantine. One cow was carrying red. The bull calf carried no color, and his sire was Parndon Charley Pudding. He became the first AI bull in the US.

In 1978 a Breeder bred her heifer back to his sire and a RED calf was born. This was the only RED animal in America at that time and RED being rare, it was the beginning of a pricey market for RED Dexters. A few years later, another red animal was born with a complete pedigree to foundation. This was the ONLY red Dexter in America with a pedigree complete to foundation. This is the cow that was the focus of the preservation effort in the article that was linked.

In the late 1970’s Woodmagic cattle, dun in color were imported to Canada, and dun was sold to an American breeder and dun became in demand.

These were the only lines of color in the US until 1987, when a RED bull from the experimental breeding project was imported to Canada with semen and offspring to the US. Except for three bloodlines of only a handful of animals that dated prior to the 1987 imports and thereafter this one 1987 bull was in overused to such a degree he was present in over 35 per cent of all US Dexters by 2005. There were two other red animals imported from the appendix registry and a polled bull from appendix lines carrying red, which, by 2013 were in 93 per cent of all USA Dexters.

Thus the concerted effort to preserve the red bloodlines prior to 1980. Nothing silly about it at all and these preservationists have NOT exploited the market as have the breeders of the post 1987 imported bloodlines, which created a frenzy that has effectively “crashed” the Dexter market here because of selling “the latest new fad” for exorbitant prices which then invited opportunists who sold every cull cow that hit the ground as breeding stock. That has been both silly and tragic.

I've bred hundreds of red Dexters that trace back to Irish Red Dexters in the 1890's.

No living Dexters have pedigrees tracing 100% completely back to Ireland with no holes.

All Dexters have some holes in their distant pedigrees.

If you think you have a Dexter with no holes in their distant pedigree, post that animal here, and I'll show you the hole(s).

The Dexter market hasn't crashed for people with excellent, compact, disease-free stock. I'm constantly sold-out and I'm turning buyers away and I have a waiting list. The Dexter market is crash-proof because of their very high-value beef. I can even sell old retired Dexter cows for US $2000 each, because their beef is fantastic.