Unregistered Dexters

[stew]

birth notify all calfs born that are eligible, but we all must be more selective of the stock we breed from that way we get a better product
or breed shit
i know what id wanna do



Edited By stew on 1213831243

[wagra]

Excellent set of criteria, Stehanie. I would add mouth in there somewhere before colour, probably second.
There is a good part of the year over here when there is no pasture long enough for a cow to wrap her tongue around, so a good wide square bite is essential. Definitely no undershot jaws.
The selection should apply much more strictly to bulls and bull mothers; not suggesting all cows with minimal faults should be culled, or no-one will have any Dexters left, or any other breed or species of stock either.
Margaret.



Edited By wagra on 1213840444

[Broomcroft]

Apart from removing faults as above, I would add that you have to have a reason for the breeding, they have to be 'fit for purpose'. Mine is beef. So marbling and tenderness would go right to the top of the list. There is, for example, at least one Elite bull who has been used extensively because he meets all the visual criteria, but tends to produce dreadful beef animals with zero marbling. It has to be taken beyond what you can see as I know most people realise, otherwise you could end up with handsome animals that have are no good to you other than to look at, which could be what you want of course.



Edited By Broomcroft on 1213870644

[Peter thornton]

If you look at Stephanies criteria, they are all about removing problems and could equally apply to any breed. In other words, it's good sense that can't be argued with.

Where the society comes in is if we try to tighten, or move, the specifications for a Dexter. That's something that's specific to Dexters.

Stew is right. There are unsuitable animals being used for breeding. It happens in every society but perhaps we have a greater proportion of inexperienced breeders (of whom I am one)

When the Society is fully functioning again, one of the most urgent tasks must be to educate and raise awareness of this issue. Many of us are choosing to put a proportion of heifers into the food chain and I for one could do with being educated to make sure that I'm getting rid of the right ones.

[Saffy]

In an ideal world there would be two "guides" for people considering buying Dexters.

How to keep Dexters and How to Recognise a Quality Dexter.

However most wouldn't buy them until after the event - if ever!!!


Stephanie

[Rutherford]

I would also ask who is going to tell you what animals to keep and why. We have spectacular examples of man’s ability to do this in the Belgium Blue and Holstein. In the Dexter we have an animal that has survived and thrived for centuries with no assistance from man. It makes sense to profit by that.
I can only claim sixty years experience. I know that I could not look at an animal and diagnose anything worthwhile of its capacity to PASS ON qualities to its offspring. What I have learnt over the years is that looking at as many possible close relatives preferably over two or three generations will give a guide to what the individual may carry and give to its offspring. Where DNA has identified a gene it can be deliberately bred for, but they are few at present, the rest is a lottery.
Logically if you are going to remove animals from the Herd Book you should also remove their parents, since they have to have inherited those faulty genes from their parents.
When an animal is culled for faults, what ‘expert’ is going to know that they are not also removing something that might be earnestly sought in a century’s time? For every gene you add you have to subtract another. If the ‘experts’ had had their way, the Woodmagics would never have been born, efforts were made to stop MINK 1st being put on AI.
Beryl (Woodmagic)

[Louisa Gidney]

I'm also interested in traits that may not be immediately apparent from visual inspection of a young animal.
First and foremost is survivability. My cattle live at 1000ft, the males are not housed in winter and have to get by with moderate to poor quality hay and lick buckets. The cows only get a small supplement of sugar beet in the last 2 months of pregnancy as they calve Jan-March indoors. I expect the cows to have a 365ish day calving interval. I expect them to have enough high butterfat milk to feed a veal calf too, if I've got the energy to do this again. I don't have the milk tested but calf growth is an indication of milk quality. I expect at least 10 year lifespan. I want shaggy coats. I want entire males to kill at 18 months with no superfluous fat. I want good udder conformation. I do like my cattle to please my eye, but I would rather a plain but useful beast than a pretty but useless one.
I do not want hog fat animals that are poor breeders and develop arthropathies from carrying too much weight around.
I therefore expect that Stew's cattle would not find a home in my herd and vice versa.
This is the strength of the Dexter, we can all have animals that suit our own circumstances but we must equally understand that we all expect our cattle to perform under different systems of management.
As Broomcroft mentioned on another thread, Estimated Breeding Values are the way forward for quantifying the traits that we all find desirable, not visual inspection.
I would heartily endorse DCS introducing an EBV scheme for bulls, in the first instance.

[stew]

Stew is right. There are unsuitable animals being used for breeding. It happens in every society but perhaps we have a greater proportion of inexperienced breeders (of whom I am one)

When the Society is fully functioning again, one of the most urgent tasks must be to educate and raise awareness of this issue. .

i simply think the dcs should help members select its breeding stock co some folk dont recognise a poor beast from a bad one

[Rutherford]

Reading your requirements Louise, would seem to me to be virtually the description of the Dexter imported from Ireland at the beginning of the last century. An animal that had evolved over many centuries fashioned by nature to survive without assistance or interference by man.
I would have no quarrel with the introduction of an EBV scheme. A keen stockbreeder will always have the ambition to improve the stock in his care. What does frighten me in the suggestion that the ‘improvement’ should encompass the entire population. I believe that all animals with both parents in the Herd Book should be automatically eligible for entry.
Plant breeders have learnt that when their efforts at improvement have led to the loss of valuable genes they can go back to the ‘wild’ species to recover them.
Providing we leave the smallholder to breed without restriction maintaining the ‘original’ we retain the ability to recover any lost genes. We do not need dictators to permanently remove genes from the entire population in the name of raising standards, using methods that completely disregard modern genetics.
Beryl (Woodmagic)

[Broomcroft]

Providing we leave the smallholder to breed without restriction maintaining the ‘original’ we retain the ability to recover any lost genes. We do not need dictators to permanently remove genes from the entire population in the name of raising standards, using methods that completely disregard modern genetics.

Fascinating, so original also means (sort of) uncontrolled and we can see why that is important. So it's fine for people to go in different directions within an overall basic model (small etc), but any overall nationwide or worldwide attempt to produce something of a specific type goes against the very nature of what the Dexter is about and you could lose something we didn't now we had.

Having taken that on board, would it be agreed that there are certain traits that everyone would consider desirable (good udders, good legs, jaw etc), in which case, maybe a little team could set about producing a small booklet that the society could print and supply showing what are good and bad points, with pictures. I don't mean anything prescriptive, just pointers. i.e. a picture or two of bad legs, and pictures of good ones, etc. etc. Our sheep society has just done that and it's simple and fantastic. I will ask if I can post a copy if they have it in pdf.



Edited By Broomcroft on 1213945329

[Rutherford]

A booklet giving guidelines would be excellent, giving the reasons for their desirability. Always providing that no attempt is made to preclude animals from the Herd Book on that basis. The appearance of an animal cannot tell you how it will breed.
I know for instance, that Pentre Hobyn Jay would have been eliminated since he had bad hind feet; his non-carrier offspring didn’t inherit them because as we now know it is linked to the chondrodysplasia, but they did inherit his beef, and my modern Woodmagic owe their beef to him, and would be the poorer without his input.
Beryl (Woodmagic)

[wagra]

Louisa, ours are 3 times higher at 1000 metres, and they have never been indoors. Our weather does get down to minus 6C regularly, and has been down to minus 14C occasionally. They never lose heart or get depressed, and they never get skinny and die. All they have over winter are large round oaten/rye bales in bale feeders, and commercial licks.
Cows about to deliver when there is snow on the ground are brought into a small 1 acre paddock with an open fronted shelter, but they rarely use it, and new calves prefer to hide under a log or in a hollow tree.
We don't give it a second thought. That hardiness is precious, but it is what we expect of our Dexters
Margaret.