What options to increase the size of our Dexters

[MAB]

Our current Dexters that have been slaughtered are coming in about 200kg dead weight and we would like to increase that without losing the quality of the meat. What would your advice be?

Should I look at certain lines or specialist breeders stock. Should I consider a cross with another breed. Is there anyone out there trying to achieve the same result.

It is imporatant to state that we only sell dead animals off the farm, never breeding stock. We do not show our stock. We simply supply a farm shop but want to get the best value from our animals and a little extra size would be useful in helping us stay with Dexters.

[Duncan MacIntyre]

Sadly I have only one suggestion to anyone suggesting increasing the size of Dexters - Find another breed which suits your purpose.

Dexters have always been small. They have got larger in recent decades and it is very important in my opinion that they are not allowed to increase any further.

If you want more Dexter beef breed more Dexters.

Duncan

[ann]

as the cost of slaughtering continues to increase, the last one I did cost me £280 for killing cutting up and bagging I can see more people asking these questions, size appears to be irrelevant to the cost, which means that the odd very small ones we sometimes get are actually hardly worth rearing.

One suggestion woth considering is, if you are only interested in running a herd of dexters to purely supply meat to your farm shop, consider crossing with a welsh black, you will get a bigger carcase, it will still finish of grass, the taste is still excellent and the cross is very laid back, and when you want any replacements you can always use A.I. I don't think I would consider using a welsh black bull on a heifer or a short legged dexter. It will be interesting to see if you get any other suggestions especially as the prices for dexters are governed by supply and demand, and more people are coming to the conclusion that unless they need replacements most heifers of a reasonable size are worth more on the hook.

[welshdexterboy]

I agree with you Duncan Dexters are Dexters and come in a certain and definite size.MAB if they don't suit then you need to look elsewhere. We keep short and non-short and the non-shorts have returned up to 224kg DW. You can crossbreed but then you are not selling Dexter beef, you are selling Dexter+ something else. Only you can decide what you want to do.???

[Martin]

If you wish to add value to your Dexters it may be worth considering cutting the meat yourself. A small cutting room adjoining the farm shop would not be a huge expence. At my local abattoir you can have as much or as little done as you wish. Killing and disposal costs would be the same for all animals, my last one came to £104.20 (including storage and MLC levy) any thing after that is an add on. I normally get the butcher to cut the carcass into primal cuts and roll the joints, I end up with whole cuts (sirloin etc) which I can then choose how I want to cut depending on my customers requirements. Everything your butcher does comes at a cost, after all he has to make a living too.

Martin.
Medway Valley Dexters.

[Sylvia]

I'm with Duncan on this too. Dexters are small cows, they are supposed to be small cows. No good ever came of trying to change a breed substantially to suit a human whim. If people want to use them in crossing experiments fine but then they are crossbreds and immediately come into competition with the commercial cows which are much bigger.

[AlisonKirk]

Dexters are a small dual purpose breed, producing the best beef there is. We're currently selling 24 month old home-bred, grass / haylage fed Dexter steers & heifers for beef and realising between £784 - £880 per animal (that's selling the whole carcass to pub/restaurants cut to their specific requirements). Our Dexters are a mixture of short & non-short, all within the breed standard.

We're selling younger than we would like, but with guaranteed orders for 3 or 4 each month, we cannot keep everything until 28-30 months. As the year progresses carcasses will increase in weight & so will the cheque at the end!

If slaughter costs increase, increase the price of your beef.

Remember, Dexter beef is perfect to supply a niche market and will command a good price. One pub/restaurant we supply is selling Dexterburgers at £11.50 each!! (They're taking the whole carcass & paying £8.80pkg).

We were recently asked if we would like a Dexter X Devon steer for slaughter - I would say lovely beef, but I asked one chef and he wasn't interested; he wants Dexter beef as we're supplying it and his customers when booking will ask if there's any Dexter beef on the menu!

Local farmers are no longer laughing at our little Dexters.

As Duncan says if you want more beef breed or buy more Dexters.

Alison Kirk
Boram Dexters

[Broomcroft]

I think it is the small size that gives them the special flavour.

You could cross with another breed and sell your beef as cross. I am looking at a small traditional type Angus and a Ruby Red Devon in the next few weeks for part of my herd. The beef from the latter cross is yummy, haven't tried Angus-Dexter. I will sell as North Devon X Dexter or North Devon-sired.

If you sell to butchers then the deadweight is obviously the pricing method, but in reality it's the amount of meat that matters. Normally, people seem to get about 120kg of meat out of a 390-400kg liveweight animal. I just got 157kg, which is similar figures to a Limo (76% of deadweight), out of the same size. So if you sell direct, that's a massive amount of extra meat, and top quality too, and very "Dextery". So maybe you could concentrate on getting more meat out of the same carcass instead of deadweight.



Edited By Broomcroft on 1207576767

[MAB]

Sorry to be a heretic on this, but a slightly bigger Dexter would be a winner for us. I don't know what systems others have their land under but we are dictated to by the stewardship scheme which states what head of cattle we can graze on each of our marshes and makes no allowance for their size!

So: thinking that others must have considered a slightly larger Dexter at some point I thought I would ask if anyone was breeding said animals. If they are not, I'm surprised, but thats fine, I just thought I would ask. If they are, then please get in touch. I did try to make the point that all these animals are for the table and not for breeding stock sales or show, I'm not trying to breed a Belgian Blue sized Dexter.

[Ted Neal]

The problem we have at the moment is we do not know which animals are putting an increase in weight on their offspring. I am guilty as the next one - I have a super big bull that is throwing some superb calves and putting weight on the frames of his offspring. I just haven't weighed his calves, at birth & at weaning or the dam at weaning to measure how much weight she has put into her calf. In the past I have crossed with Red Polls - a breed that boasts along the same line as we Dexters. Dual purpose, milk, marbling on the beef. The crosses either way have been very good and that little bit larger.

[Saffy]

When we were looking to start in Dexters we took a walk around quite a few different herds.

Some herds were of a very uniform size but not perhaps the same size as the next herd we visited but one or two herds we saw had all shapes and sizes from very wide, short legs to very big, rangy long legs.

So maybe you should visit a few herds and if you see an extra large Dexter or two you could always make an offer!

Stephanie

[Peter thornton]

I think that some of the answers are a bit negative.
I agree that the basic Dexter cow should not become any bigger, and that if you want a bigger cow then you should change breeds. However, crossing is a perfectly respectable thing to do.
Think about it. If Dexter crosses were to be used a bit more (for beef production) then it increases the demand for Dexter females. The whole upland sheep industry depends upon crosses and sells Mules year after year to lowland farmers who cannot breed their own replacements. (Well, they could, but not by using the females produced from their Mules, if you see what I mean)
The killing costs ARE becoming a real factor in the maketing of Dexter beef. The per head subsidies used to balance this out. You could keep more Dexters per acre than the larger breeds and you got more subsidy to cancel out the extra killing costs.

[welshdexterboy]

Hi Peter, no one has said he shouldn't cross and everything you say is also valid but MAB did ask about increasing the size of Dexters. MAB didn't say how he feeds his cattle to make them grow, what is the quality of feed down on the marshes where he keeps them, these are all factors to be considered, does he take them right to the thirty months. The questions just go on and on. At the end of the day MAB needs to do what suits him best as he is the one paying the bills. Let us know how the crosses turn out please.

[Broomcroft]

I also agree with Peter and see crossing as mainly positive. From a bit of tasting we have done, if you cross with a bigger breed, then you water down the Dexter flavour, but you still get an improvement to the beef of the larger breed. Many people prefer the milder flavour of a cross and you also get bigger carving joints, which is why I'm going down the road of half pure and half crosses.

When we tried North Devon X Dexter beef (steaks and joints) it was very tasty. Personally, I could only taste a hint of Dexter but my wife thought it was Dexter.

A friend who crosses a small Angus bull to his reasonable-sized Dexter cows, gets a deadweight of around 280 kg, so it is still quite small, whereas typically he would get about 190-210kg DW from a Dexter.

I have never heard of a cross the other way around apart from one in Australia where a Dexter X came second in a national beef carcass competition and X Dexter came first.

Perhaps an article in Farmers Weekly would help dexterdom? Improve your beef. Get your size down by using dexter. Finish totally on grass. Lower your costs. Have hardier, milkier stock. Less or no feed. Less damage to your ground. Leave them out longer.........

If you can get 280kg out of a Dexter female by putting them to a suitable larger breed, then a farmer can expect to have more cattle on their holding. The big processors are having difficulty getting smaller cattle. I was at a meeting with the ASDA main beef buyer. They had been forced to invent new packaging methods, which they were not pleased about, just because the commercial farmers were producing carcasses over 400kg DW and rising! They didn't want them, they wanted in the 300's (I think).

So surely there is a market for using Dexter bulls to bring down the size of commercial cows and then use them for breeding beef stock, and also for using Dexter females with a bigger bull, or a cross bull even.

My freezer will have pure Dexter though! It isn't just yummy, it's stunning.



Edited By Broomcroft on 1207754998

[AlisonKirk]

If deciding to produce Dexter X beef do your homework first... have you an outlet for the beef? It will certainly be better than most other beef, but the Dexter X would come under the same category as the beef produced by the livestock farmer down the road. Have a word with commercial beef farmers, it's a different world for them.

Dexter beef is special ... it is produced from a dual purpose cow with excellent ability to utilise all its food in such a way that most other breeds cannot.

When speaking to various Dexter breeders it becomes clear that everyone is "doing it their own way" and most are successfully promoting / selling their own beef.

Look at improving margins by better grassland management, improving winter fodder. We produce our own winter fodder, which we are happy with, but we are now planning to improve that.

Alison Kirk
Boram Dexters