dairying

[pudser]

Hi,
Dexters have traditionally been a dual purpose breed but I have not seen/heard of anyone milking a herd on a commercial scale in recent times. It appears to me that this would be commercially viable given historical production levels on low input systems or am I dreaming

Thanks

Pudser

[Saffy]

I used to be a dairy farmer but with friesians and now keep dexters in a small way - I only have 4 cows but certainly the ones I have would be viable as dairy cows. I have only milked a little colostrum off them by hand to have a bit in the freezer in case I need it for another calf but you can see that if they were treated as dairy animals they would milk as dairy animals.

Some I have seen around don't look as milky as others I think it must depend a bit on how they have been bred over the years but the person I bought mine from ran them as a dairy herd years ago and bred for milk and it certainly still shows. A heifer that calved a huge calf - had to do a c section - at 21 months is still feeding her calf too much to wean easily yet and he is 9 months old and taller than her. He will have to come off soon though as she calves again in April.

The older cow we have here - the dun, has been both hand milked and machine milked as well as rearing a calf in the past before we had her.

Stephanie



Edited By Saffy on 1232624274

[pudser]

Thanks Stephanie and I take your points on board. There are quite a few dairy type dexters about but most if not all of the contributers are concentrating on beef.In time the dairy qualities will become lesser and I am surprised tht noone has cottoned onto the Dexter as an ideal cow for producing milk organically in comparassion to the inputs required by holsteins or even the channel island breeds. Organic dexter cheese yohurt or even icecream would seem like a worthwhile alternative enterprise.

Pudser

[Duncan MacIntyre]

Having had a fair proportion of my income over my professional career come from the dairy industry, and seen the numbers of dairy farms in our area half, I would worry a bit about the economics of starting any dairy business at the moment. The general trend seems to be relentlessly towards bigger and bigger herds, and of course although the dexter will produce a formidable amount of milk for her size, to produce a quantity of milk to make a living from nowadays would mean, I think would mean a very large herd indeed. A milking parlour would need to be of suitable dimensions, as would cubicles etc if they were to be used. I had experience a few years ago with a herd of friesian/holsteins to which the owner added a herd of Jerseys, and the difference in size made life very difficult. I know that the Woodmagic herd were milked through a rotary parlour, maybe Beryl can tell us if it was of standard size or customised.

I used to milk literally one or two Dexters at a time, and found that the best yields were when they were being fed a good bit of concentrate. I did have them up to 4 gallons daily though, which is far in excess of the proportionate yield of a modern dairy breed. Peak butterfat reading was 6.25%s, with average usually over 4%.

Carol Clark in Yorkshire used to run the "Small cow and Big Sheep" (smaybe not got the title quite right) and milked Dexters and sheep in a parlour designed for both, and the public could watch through glass. They then could eat and drink the products, including ice cream.

Duncan

[Broomcroft]

Grass-fed beef has been shown to have health advantages, but grass-fed milk and dairy is supposed to be far better still by a long shot. If I could get it, I would drink nothing else or eat no cheese other than from 10% grass-fed. So can Dexters produce milk off a grass only diet better than a larger cow? As less energy will go into keeping the larger body going, maybe they can, any idea? A clover-rich diet should be even better still with a huge increase in natural, beneficial fatty acids.

Although we're beef, we've kept a dairy-type breeding line going, meanng on the dairy side of dual purpose. These cows are great for beef production with a good bull as well.



Edited By Broomcroft on 1232695655

[Broomcroft]

Again, I can't edit the above mistake!

It should read 100% grass-fed of course, not 10%.



Edited By Broomcroft on 1232702123

[Woodmagic]

Yes, Dexters do milk well for their size, but as Duncan says today even herds of 300 – 400 Holsteins have difficulty in making a profit. The problem with a Dexter too, is that some overheads are going to double up – vets bills are per head. Buildings will not house twice the number in the case of the Dexter. The top yielding Dexters at 4 gallons will not milk in half the time of an eight-gallon Holstein taking on board all the operations.
There might be a place for niche markets such as cheese, but a niche product has to be limited in quantity.
I put mine through a rotary because unlike a herring bone it was not purpose built, and could have been used for Holsteins. I have always made it a rule, where capital expenditure was concerned, not to put anything in which would not answer for bigger breeds, against a time I might want to sell.
I do think it important to keep the milk, more folks are wanting a house cow, and you need plenty of milk if you are into beef or your calf is going to suffer; but I don’t think ordinary milk production with a herd of Dexters is a practical proposition today.
Beryl (Woodmagic)

[pudser]

Dairying has definitely changed with the move to large scale farming operations but everthing tends to work in cycles . I believe that Dexters are ideally placed genetically to benefit from the demand for organic product . My worry is that through generations of suckling and breeding for beef the dairy characteristics will be lost and the cows will not be as docile or easy to handle. I do not intend starting milking myself at the present time as it would not fit with a veterinary life style but I would see it as an alternative to just concentrating solely on niche beef sales

[Duncan MacIntyre]

Hello Pudser,

as an aside from your last post, can you suggest anything at all thats fits in with a veterinary lifestyle? Just curious, as life seems to get more complex and time shrinks.

Duncan

[redhill]

Pudser,

Re your last posting, now is the time to start domesticating your future milking herd, breed from bulls with a good milk producing history, get to know your heifer calves, spend time with them ,brushing and stroking especially around what will be the udder , halter train them if it makes life easier for you.

We have always milked our newly calved cows,just until the calf is able to take all of her milk, we have a milking machine,but find it just as easy to hand milk in the pen, calf stays in with mum, so no stress.
While bonding with your girls, pick their feet up one at a time,they slowly get used to this and I'm sure that as a Vet you will appreciate how useful this is.

Sue Castlemears Herd

[Martin]

Even keeping good milking lines will not be enough to retain the ability for cows to milk well. Unless cows are milked out regularly the milk yield will fall, especially over a few generations, cows will only produce what is needed so it is inevitable that yield will suffer when just a calf is suckling. This may not show for a few generations but it will happen especially as few Dexters are recorded with bull performance figures non existant.
Commercial breeders that I know use performance data to choose bulls for different purposes, ie. one bull to produce replacement heifers (because his milk figures are good) and another for beef (because his beef figures are good) To do this you need information that at the moment is sadly lacking in Dexterdom.

[Broomcroft]

We've just moved away from tups selected on looks by extremely experienced breeders, to recorded tups with good index figures regardless of their looks. The difference is amazing. Our lambs are now just fantastic. We also have, at the moment, the highest recorded index tup of our breed in the UK and he is as ugly as hell, perfectly sound and well put together, but ugly. He would have been rejected years ago. You can't tell by looking; it's what you can't see that matters most.



Edited By Broomcroft on 1233048784

[Duncan MacIntyre]

Not milking cows will not in itself reduce their potential to produce milk. An individual suckled instead of milked may well give less, but the potential will still be there. In fact a great many sucklers, not just of the Dexter breed, produce quite a considerable milk yield, but it is very difficult to measure it.
What is really lost when cows are not milked and the yields not recorded is the ability of the breeder to select for milk yield - so as generations go on the milk yield of a breed is certainly not likely to increase and may well tend to reduce - or at least the high yielders will be lost. However the potential should still be there and could be recovered in time.

Duncan

[Colin]

Interesting news item this morning:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/7854745.stm

[redhill]

About time too...

Castlemears Goldust