Hardy Native Breeds?

[areoch]

Looking for some points of view on what might be considered basic to the the more experienced members out there.
Briefly, can we start to undo one of our Dexter cattles' inherant qualities - hardiness - by over pampering during the winter months ??
Too much shelter, too much fodder made available when there is still a relatively good degree of natural winter foraging available (if the artificially provided feeding was held back).
Will these native cattle gradually become LESS hardy ?? :;):
Morton. (A new member)

[Duncan MacIntyre]

Welcome Morton,
the answer I suppose is yes, but not so quickly as if you keep them in a shed like I do. But if I kept them out I would have no grass next spring and would probably be reported to SSPCA for keeping them in a quagmire. Any changes will be very slow and will only result because some which would die if left to their own devices will survive because of pampering and reproduce themselves, so the proportion of animals with "soft" genes will slowly increase.
Would we survive the conditions of our ancestors?
The RBST had to sell off the North Ronaldsay stock on Linga Holm because of fears that they would be prosecuted for not giving them enough TLC. Apparently a passing yachtsman had seen a dead sheep on the shore and trouble was expected. I don't suppose any sheep die anywhere else, do they?
Seriously though, is it not probable that Dexters in UK will have undergone any such changes shortly after they were introduced to England since most of them came to be ornaments in the Policy Parks of the landed gentry?

Duncan, hoping your cattle are all well, and that Eleanor is not overfeeding them!

[PeterO]

Morton

You have a point - one of the reasons I initially got Dexters is that they were hardy enough to survive happily outside through the winter (900 ft up in the snowy Shropshire hills). They are also light enough not to poach the ground too much except around troughs. My farmer neighbours would love to leave their cattle out but can't and therefore get the pneumonia and other ills (incl vets bills) that seem to affect housed animals.

My Dexters often quite happily choose hedge and weed foraging to hay (more interesting?) but I must admit a bucket of nuts and I would get buried in the stampede.

In short, Dexters are less work and much cheaper to keep kept outside if your land permits, so on that basis I suggest we will always have a hardy strain.

Peter

[Sylvia]

I am just so delighted to hear that housed cattle suffer so many ills when I am almost bankrupt from building a new barn just to put ours into. It is not quite ready, so quick can anyone suggest something else I can use it for while my Dexters stay out and wreck all their next year grazing. I suppose you are all aware that animals must not now poach fields or the cross compliance police will come and do dreadful things to you ??? Yours, not as hardy as grandmother let alone anyone further back, Sylvia

[PeterO]

Sylvia

If you are like me - any unused barns/housing rapidly fills up with the hay/straw overflow, farm and garden implements, young chicken and ducks, fencing materiel, the ATV I have to repair one day etc etc.

Have you already got the tractor and bucket, straw supply, slurry/muck storage site and muck spreader to go with your new housing?

Good luck

Peter

[Sylvia]

PeterO

Why do you think we needed the new barn? The others are all filled with most of the above plus alpaca fleeces and lord knows what else. (no ducks though)

Regarding the rest, I've got the man with the tractor etc, etc as long as I don't upset him so he goes off in a huff, but please don't mention straw, down here in Wales I think it would be cheaper to line the barn with gold bars although I suppose they wouldn't be so absorbent.

[Kathy Millar]

Sylvia, I'm amazed that straw can be expensive anywhere in the UK, we pay more for the darned stuff here on the Island than the finest third cut hay. Luckily we can use relatively cheap sawdust for the cows but unfortunately must use straw for the sheep. And if I run out of sawdust, I could use the cow's hay, as it is about half the price of a bale of straw! I have to confine my cows to the barn and their yard too for the winter, and had to buy a truckload of bark mulch to prevent them from disappearing in the mud. And then sometime in the spring, I will have to remover the layer of dirty, mucky, bark mulch and replace it with another......I really hope some day I can fence off the rest of the property and kick the girls out into the woods for the winter. They really do love to browse the brush but they will kill trees if they are bored. My husband hates seeing teeth marks in tree bark.

Kathy :D

[Sylvia]

Kathy, it came as a bit of a shock to me when we moved down here too, the fact that straw is more expensive and harder to come by than hay. I was interested that you used bark mulch. I am intending to use wood chips under the straw in the hope it will cut costs. This is all experimental to find out the best way of doing it. Do sawdust and mulch rot down enough to spread on the fields?

[Martin]

I would imagine that most people house their stock in winter for the same reason as me, we would like to have as much grass as possible in spring & early summer. Housing cattle can be problematic, but if you follow some basic rules you should not have too many trials.
Space & air are the two main things to get right. I have a pole barn which I put up 20 years ago as a sheep shed, it is 24ft deep by 72ft long, one of the long sides and both ends are clad to 5ft and Yorkshire boarded above, the front is gated. I will not allow any less than 12ft x 12ft for each cow, ( less for young stock). I can stand in the middle of this shed & feel the wind in my face whatever direction it is comming from. when it is cold outside it is cold inside. My vet likes it and my cows seem happy & contented, even so I like to keep them out as long as possible. They came in on the 31st of December this year as we have had reasonable weather here in the sunny south east. Due to calve begining of April they will be mothered up and put to rested pasture 48hrs after. Although this is my first winter with Dexters, my shed has been used to house stock without problems for many years and do not expect any now.
You must when housing stock check that there is adequate air flow, when you walk inside if it feels comfortable and warm, you probably do not have enough. Cobwebs are another sign of insuficient air flow.
Getting back to the point, are Dexters losing their hardiness, I suppose they are really, but on the other hand I'm a southern softee, so how could I tell?
Martin.