dexter crossing

[sues]

we are just in the process of deciding what bull to use on our cows and would like to use maybe an angus to produce a slightly bigger carcass. Has anyone had any experiance with using a different bull, any advice would be greatly received!!

[Broomcroft]

We've had about 100 calves from putting Angus on Dexter. The calves were great. Very fit, bigger the Dexter usually but easy calving, and grow quickly with good muscling, back and back end.

What I did was:

- Choose a bull that is not so big (hard to find IME)
- Use cows (not heifers)
- Only use non-shorts and preferably bigger ones
- Buy the bull young, 14-24 months, use him, then get rid when he's about 4 years because of his physical size for mating, unless he really is a small AA
- Calve inside and keep an eye on them, had to help a few but not much more than a pure Dexter
- Keep the weight off your cows especially during pregnancy to help keep calf size down

Calves should be about as big as mom when they are about 9-10 months if mine are anything to go by. The beef is superb.

All calves should be polled if it's a proper AA.

[Broomcroft]

PS. Some photos....

A Dangus heifer


Steers at 10 months


A heifer calf (not sure of age)

[Rob R]

The calves were great.

I note your use of the past tense there Clive, are you not doing any more?

[Broomcroft]

I changed over to a Stabiliser bull last year as I lost my AA to tetanus and couldn't find a reasonable sized AA anywhere. Stabiliser is even easier calving (only had a dozen though to be fair). AA is a better grass animal IMO. But calves are only a few months old so reserve judgement for a while yet.

Here's the AA bull I used (Borut was his name):



Here's my Stabiliser bull at 15 months. He's in with the cows again now, mostly Dexters, plus a few Dangus.

[Rob R]

Ah, yes, of course, I remember now you mention the Stabiliser.

[Jac]

I changed over to a Stabiliser bull last year as I lost my AA to tetanus and couldn't find a reasonable sized AA anywhere.

Have you tried Brenda Pittams 01874 658255 (Dark Lane Angus)?

[Broomcroft]

Oh yes, I remember Dark Lane Angus at various shows, thought they weren't too big, at least back then. [edited] But just looked at their website and they look pretty big to me now! They've also got a picture on their site showing how small AA's were not so long back.

Thanks Jac

PS. The other thing I have found good with AA's instead of another bigger breed, is simply the name. Both Angus and Dexter beef have a good name with butchers, and a mixture of the two goes down well round here. But where you are sues, there may be another breed that would be well received. Red Ruby Devons are used a lot on Dexter, but round here no-one would know what one of those was, so no point doing it.

[sues]

Oh yes, I remember Dark Lane Angus at various shows, thought they weren't too big, at least back then. [edited] But just looked at their website and they look pretty big to me now! They've also got a picture on their site showing how small AA's were not so long back.

Thanks Jac

PS. The other thing I have found good with AA's instead of another bigger breed, is simply the name. Both Angus and Dexter beef have a good name with butchers, and a mixture of the two goes down well round here. But where you are sues, there may be another breed that would be well received. Red Ruby Devons are used a lot on Dexter, but round here no-one would know what one of those was, so no point doing it.

Thanks Clive that info is very helpful. We are in derbyshire and have a farm shop, both the angus and the dexter beef sells well so a cross is ideal as it should give a bigger carcass. I was just concerned about putting a bigger bull on the cows as I've never had a problem with calving and don't want to make my life or the cows difficult!! We are going to go down th AI root and have a very good advisery chap so I'm confident he will come up with the right bull. Its nice to get the opinion from others who have experiance with crossing tho!!

[domsmith]

Ah yes crossing Dexters!

Angus is my main cross. Clive is being very sensible, i on the other hand have been quite reckless!
I have some pedigree Angus so bred my own bull. he is not the biggest but has great breeding in him. IMO he produces crackers!. i have used him on heifers no prbs at all, and these heifers were smaller non shorts.
i have no calving problems to report at all. we calve outside so cant risk too many problems. i have had to pull 1 this year, by hand no jack. my main problem this year has been making sure they suck. better safe than sorry i have put calves on cows and messed about for ages with some of them, just cbecause i wasnt sure. other than that no probs.
I have kept about 10 heifers for breeding and they have calved really well, in fact so well i will bulk the herd out with a few more.
I have a Galloway cross dexter cow, shes a wee belter, and belted. a great cow!
I also have dexter limousin cows, they again have been good
also calved a dexter to the charolais, by accident, it calved as a heifer with little difficulty.

This year as well as running my Angus, i have hopes of trying Wagyu, and simmental across both dexter and dangus.

Highland Wagyu have just bought in 10 dexter heifers from Windy Knowe. she intends to calve pure this year but then go to the Wagyu. will be interesting to see.
she has just crossed the shorthorn with wagyu, i asked what she calls them, she says Shagyu!!! LOL



dom

[ann]

How do you market your crosses, and what sort of dead weight do they kill out at. I see ABP which is our local place to send to if you are fabl, is knocking quite a bit of money of if you weights are under 250kg, but would have thought your X's would easily make that weight.

if you sell as stores, what age do you sell them?

[Rob R]

I'm just wondering, if size is your overall aim, is it really sensible to start with the smallest breed? Most breeds are used for crossing, but usually with the lower quality examples of the breed, it seems to key to sucessful cross breeding with Dexters is to use your best cows, so where does that leave the replacements coming from?

[Broomcroft]

For me, size is important, I don't want big cattle, which is why I crossed with Dexter as the cow. What I ended up with with my Dangus (and I've never seen anyone else's), is a perfect size for me.

Ann, steer carcasses would come in at about 250-285kgs usually, but that's taking them at 22-24 months whereas a Dexter I would take to 27-30. I have taken them to ABP and most graded R with no knockdown in price, but just one was an O and I didn't get what I would from a good butcher. So I stick to good butchers only now.

But it's not just the size it's the finishing and the shape. They put on shape very easily and straight off grass. That would also apply to the AA bull I had, although big, he did very well on grass alone and needed nothing else at all. Keeping weight off him was more of a problem. He passed that onto his progeny.

Also, and Dom will have a better idea on this, you get more of the expensive cuts.

[Rob R]

So what is your end goal with the crossing, are you breeding a certain percentage of the Dexters pure to provide replacements for the crossing, or trying to produce a composite breed that breeds true but has Dexter as founding genetics?

I can see that selling to butchers might be a big part of it, as they do seem to demand Dexters that are bigger than Dexters, but equally the figures you were achieving with the pure Dexters were good, profitable weights. I suspect that the majority of people considering crossing Dexters are hoping to turn their unprofitable Dexters into Dexter crosses. The Stabiliser was developed as that more compact composite breed, though, and perhaps with that as your basis you could hit the 285kg mark at around 12-14 months and knock another 10 months off the time?

[Broomcroft]

Unfortunately, I haven't got figures for the individual cuts, but that should be the key, not just size, i.e. more value. The animals are long and well muscled along the back and back end. It's much easier to get crosses to a butcher as many aren't interested in Dexters as too small, or just seen as too small, as we all know. But still a good niche market out there.

As far as what is the end-result I'm aiming for, it is just to have good animals for beef, highly marbled, and not too big or too small.

Personally I had two plans in mind, one to simply cross AA with Dexter and sell all offspring as fat. Second plan was to keep the better Dangus females back and breed them back to a Dexter bull. I tried a sample batch of just three and result was it didn't work. Calves went back to an animal that was too small, although a bit better shape but not worth all the bother.

The reason for the Stabiliser is quite simple, I could not find a reasonable sized AA at the time and as I knew two big herds of Stabilisers and knew for a fact how easy calving they were, I thought I'd give them a go. The idea behind Stabs is mainly, born small and grow like stink. So far that seems to be the case but I'll have to wait and see how the beef turns out.

But anyhow, it's all going pear-shaped because we're surrounded by TB now and even though a closed herd with double-fencing everywhere, we had our first case this year, and confirmed TB. So I've been getting my numbers right down from nearly 150 head to 35 and still going down.

In hindsight with what I know so far and if I were starting again, I would use Dexters cows of a certain type and an AA bull or similar. There's lot of Dexter crossing in the USA and they say that anything crossed with a Dexter gives good beef.