Halter training for auctions - Sale of untrained stock

[Saffy]

Martin - I could not agree more, it is SO important to be selective. We will harden our hearts somehow and eat any heifers that are not of good conformation or if need be we would even do that after they had produced us a calf if they did not milk well or were not good mothers.

A background of farming will make those choices slightly easier but still hard enough!

Surely if anyone was attempting selling a fully grown quality heifer for breeding and couldn't get "beef money" they would simply sell her for beef anyway?

We looked around us before we bought ours and saw how easy it was to buy even 2 Dexters and find a few years later that you had got 15 and didn't really know how that happened, so are going to try to be careful!!!

[Rutherford]

Problem is Martin, that what the ‘pedigree market requires’ is not an animal with good performance figures, but an animal fit to show, the Dexter breed is marching backwards.
Clive has hit the nail on the head; there is concentration on showing, with no emphasis on performance. I struggled a few years ago to redress this with my concept of an elite bull scheme, sadly it has dismally failed, and inspection concentrates on little other than show points.
Where good sale prices do occur, they are certainly not backed by performance statistics. An animal can be thrown out of the Herd Book for carrying a speck of white in front of the navel, although this has no genetic backing. Recently size regulations were upped for a considerably bigger animal, in contradiction of the agreed international standards.
Within the next few years the Dexter will bear little relationship to the small hardy animal prized by its cottager owner for its ability to produce milk and beef under very adverse conditions almost entirely unaided. It has survived so far, in spite of, not as result of the Society machinations.
We have the opportunity as Clive says, to exploit conditions which could provide a good income with the Dexter ready made, if we are prepared to make the most of it.
The latest Bulletin highlights one or two breeders who are taking the commercial side of breeding seriously, but we need much more of a lead from centre.
Martin you say that buyers can still be found, there is a report on prices of a February sale at Ashford - £250 average for in calf heifers, 10 cows at £167 that is a price one might have excelled ten years ago, but today’s inflation depresses those figures considerably, and although they probably would make more for meat, one would hope the majority would qualify as breeding animals, or has the breed already gone down the drain?
Beryl (Woodmagic)

[welshdexterboy]

Mrs. Rutherford I am a novice concerning Dexters compared to you but prices through the mart are not I think a true reflection of their worth. If you have cattle to sell at home for breeding you ask for what you want and then you get a buyer or not. If animals are thrown out for white in front of the navel then if the book says they are to be white free then they must be so. I agree it was wrong to increase the height of the animal after deciding world-wide on a height limit because it as you say the thin edge of the wedge and where will the original Dexter be in the future. With the furore going on at the moment about beef being sold in this country, from all over the world, and being labeled as British now is our chance to push local, know where it comes from Dexter beef. As an add-on did you hear that the Irish reckon they can differentiate between various breeds through tests on the meat! I thought the man at the AGM said it couldn't be done?

[Sylvia]

I'm interested in what the careful selection process for animals worth keeping will concentrate on.

Will it be the breeding out of the bulldog gene?

Will it be selecting the (come on folks admit it) the typical short Dexter?

Will it be for a chunky animal (for beef) or a lighter framed animal (for milk)?

Will it be ditching the shorts for mediums?

Will it be easy calving traits?

Good beef quality (and quantity)?

Ditto milk?

Good feet that seldom need trimming?

Black, red or dun?

There are probably enough options in the Dexter world for almost everyone to select a different trait which they consider to be 'ideal'.

I think it may be time to stop making the Dexter be all things for all people.

[Rutherford]

I agree selling Dexters in the open market means they certainly wont make a fair price, as too many desperate owners have found to their cost, which is why I suggest the Dexter Society should do their best to provide facilities, and not put further hurdles in their way, such as demanding they should be halter trained. However, the prices I quoted were from the last Bulletin, and were at least a notified sale.
The ruling on white in front of the navel was supposed to have been imposed comparatively recently, in order to prevent registration of animals that were not pure Dexter, but their parents remain eligible, which in itself is illogical, moreover the gene which provides white behind the navel is normally the same gene that puts it in front of it, it is totally lacking any sense.
Professor Bruford explained at the A.G.M., the Dexter breed to date has not provided an individual marker, which could identify the breed. Presumably the Irish tests are confined to those breeds, which have. The news this morning was talking of tests, organised by the B.B.C., which have proved 20% of Devon restaurants have been providing meat from foreign exotics, which could not possibly be local as they were claiming, by means of similar tests.
Beryl (Woodmagic)

[Broomcroft]

Is the bulldog gene something that ought to be bred out? Or is it a good thing?

[Duncan MacIntyre]

The bulldog gene can be bred out, but not until most breeders see that they can breed traditional size dexters without it. There are a few such animals about, and they are usually mistaken for carriers. The record priced bull at Melton last year is a case in point - at a quick glance most people saw a short legged bull in the pen, and it was only the declaration that he was tested as a non-carrier that made them take a second look. If more breeders were concentrating on maintaining the small size of non carriers instead of increasing the size then we would be able to be free of the bulldog gene.

The only good point about the bulldog gene is that its presence gives the attractive small compact animal that attracts so many of us to the breed initially.

Genetic testing allows us to be sure of carrier versus non-carrier, and to be confident that in selecting traditional size dexters we are not selecting the bulldog gene, running the risk of bulldogs, which are non-viable, damaging cows in the process of producing them, and possibly increasing the chances of arthritis in the carrier animals. Using small non-carriers our herds will breed true and proper selection for the points we wish to emphasise in our herds will be easier.

Many people are really turned off by the idea of animals which carry a serious defect, and being rid of it would free us from that stigma.

Duncan

[Sylvia]

But just how many of these small compact non-carriers are there in the general population of Dexters? When I tested all my short cows a few years back every one came back a carrier despite their pedigrees covering many, many herd names. This was a big shock because testing is expensive and frankly seemed a waste of time if all visually short cows are carriers. I didn't bother to test the non shorts, apart from the bull, who is a non carrier. I have never had a bulldog calf in 104 births.

So if the non carrier shorts are rare how does this affect the gene pool if they are concentrated on?

[Sylvia]

Or, another thought occurs to me, does one get them by mating short to short and the calves which arrive which are not the highly damaging bulldogs are the ones to breed from? Risking one's animals in this way may be OK for the scientifically minded, but I can't see it being popular with any other class of Dexter owner.

[wagra dexters]

Clive, putting my neck on the chopping block, may I ask you how can potentially lethal genetic deformities ever be a good thing?

We all know that the dwarf has been considered the classic dexter type for most of the 20th century, by popular perception, but it's not like the non-carrier is a new breed. It's been there all along, as a more reliable aspect of the same breed. I would have thought that a guarantee of no bulldog offspring would be a more relevant sales pitch than being halter trained, because the latter can be applied by the new owner if required, unlike the former.

We don't halter train any now as we are not showing, but they learn quite early to come when they are called, and that being scratched all over is the price they have to pay for the grain in their troughs.

Margaret.

[Broomcroft]

Clive, putting my neck on the chopping block, may I ask you how can potentially lethal genetic deformities ever be a good thing?

In a word, never.

[Louisa Gidney]

Just to point out that achondroplasia is known among the earliest prehistoric domestic cattle from the Scottish Islands, so it would appear to have been one of the ways in which the wild aurochs with 6ft+ withers height was "shrunk" to domestic Dexter size by deliberate breeding.
There are lots of unregistered short leg carrier Dexters both here & in America. So, even if we eradicate carriers from the pedigree registered herd, anyone wanting a classic short leg Dexter would still be able to source one. That there is a demand for such animals in the USA is shown by several websites advertising these miniature cattle at exorbitant prices. If there are buyers, then people will breed them to supply the market. Money talks.
Eugenics. A very popular concept in late C19th/early C20th, which became a hot potato after Hitler & the idea of creating a master race. I would strongly recommend looking at the reasons why eugenics became discredited before advocating the adoption of this ideology to our cattle.

[Rutherford]

Louise where is your sense of proportion, or are you about to suggest we build hospices for Dexters lame with arthritis as a result of being bred short leg. Anyone who has watched a cow mourning over a dead bulldog calf, (accidents can happen so long as short leg bulls are retained to produce short legs from long leg cows); or watched a lame cow crawl across the meadow while her stable-mates galloped with gay abandon, has a right to say we should provide a breeding programme to avoid it.
Eugenics doesn’t come into it; no one is suggesting killing off the existing short leg cattle. Personally, I wish them all a happy and long life. I am sure the dwarf syndrome can be found in early cattle, and the farmer would have had no idea of how to prevent it. Most human dwarfs today are spontaneous mutations. Early in the last century man encouraged it in most beef breeds, but only the Dexter, mainly not kept by commercial farmers retained it, all the other breeds have done their best to eliminate it. .
The craze in America is doomed eventually, the E.U. is now teetering on banning all lethal abnormalities, if we don’t do it first, it will be forced on us. Some northern countries have gone ahead already.
Beryl (Woodmagic)

[Broomcroft]

Thinking of Sylvia's comments re breeding short non-carriers, I have copied this below off the PDCA (I think) website. Is it correct? Because it says 2 carriers can produce 25% Normal calves (i.e. non-carriers). So why didn't Sylvia get any?

Affected X Normal = 50% Affected, 50% Normal calves
Normal X Normal = 100% Normal calves
Affected X Affected = 50% Affected calves, 25% Normal calves, 25% Severely Affected calves
Severely Affected X Severely Affected (if it were possible) = 100% Severely Affected

("Severely Affected" equates to bulldog).

If the EU ban lethal abnormalities, I'll have to emigrate :D



Edited By Broomcroft on 1209918903

[Sylvia]

Because Sylvia, armed with the knowledge that to avoid a deformed calf one must never breed short to short, has followed those rules and always used a non-short bull. Therefore - no deformed calves. I have plenty of non-carriers but they are what I'd call non-short. The reason I did not buy in any short cows who were not carriers (because when I was buying I did not think to ask because I didn't think there were any) is the reason I'm asking now - how many of these mythical beasts are there out there ? By which I mean typical short Dexters who are NOT carriers.