Back on the high horse

[ann]

I just thought I'd check out prices to see what we are up against, and here are the results from this site;

you have been busy Rob

Just to throw my 2p worth in, I'm not sure why anyone crossing a dexter with an AA would register it as a Dexter on its passport, sold as a store animal with would fetch far more than a dexter of similar age, plus if you wanted to run it one and sell as a finished animal you will get a premium to.

If you are selling your meat privately them that is slightly different but you will have a much bigger carcase to move on and unless you have regular customers it might be more than the average person wishes to sell at one go.

I know of several people who keep unregistered dexters and cross them with native breeds, the reason they keep dexters is because they do not poach the land up if kept outside and these people sell their calves at weaning.

Unfortunately dexters are considered by a lot of people as pets and as with dogs when they get fed up with all the work involved or because they have become over stock for their little piece of land suddenly decide they want rid of them. Price does not seem to play a big part in their decisions. We live in a chuck away society, people will pay hundreds of pounds for a puppy and when it out grows their life style the dump it, not quite so easy to dump a cow, but sending it to an open market or advertising it very cheap is just about the same thing.

I try to do my home work when I sell anything to try and find good homes with people who actually have researched the idea of keeping cattle and many of mine are still with their original buyers many years later, but it is getting harder as there are now so many cattle out there for sale, so unless I have a good knowledgeable buyer for my stock I beef them, which is really quite sad as I have sent some very nice heifers to the butchers but I get a good price and they are not going to end up in some market looking like a welfare case.

Sorry for the rant but the only person who can control where your cattle go is you, not the DCS
Ask a sensible price and if you don't get it, dont sell it.

[Rob R]

I just thought I'd check out prices to see what we are up against, and here are the results from this site;

you have been busy Rob

I was curious & a quick flick through the listings didn't say 'dirt cheap' to me, also I like playing around with stats. I thought I would have had a few more replies by now to say what the prices should be.

I agree with the rest of your post, it is purely in the hands of the breeder as to the price they let their animals go for. I also strongly believe that if breeders think that prices are too low they should buy the stock themselves, not ask others to pay more for them than they are worth to the buyer. Established breeders, with the knowledge to recognise the worth of an animal, should be selecting and maintaining good breeding stock for the good of the breed. We can't rely on newbies to do this for us while we complain about how little they value our animals. It is in our hands and noone else's.

[domsmith]

Robin your at it again! lol

I read what you have to say and have spoken to you about it. but i have to say i think you have all missed the point.

The reason why dexter cattle are sold at low prices is because they are not commercial cattle. It does not matter what anyone says about making a living from them or not, the buyers of commercial cattle will not buy them.
until you address that then there is little bottom to the market, so they will continue to trade low.

if i have to sell angus cattle quickly i take them to the market and i get a market price for them. if i were to do that with dexters i would get pocket change.
so to get a price for them you have to sell to the specialist buyer, and thats the point they are specialist. If the buyers arent looking you cant sell unless they are cheap.

i dont see how you can engineer sales to suit your needs, if you need to sell, you need to sell!

You could of course create such demand for dexter beef that finishing stock goes through the roof, that would filter down through the market. but dexter breeders and retailers are a disperate bunch.

i think you will have to put up with the prices for some time to come.

dominic

[robin walker]

Hi Dominic
How right you are I am back at it again , until the right people recognise that Dexters have a place in the market I will keep at it . Good pure pedigree Dexter cattle producing good quality Dexter calves have a very good place in the production of beef , if we can organise those breeding pure cattle , if we can get the marketing correct and it is all down to marketing , Dexter can have its place . I agree you are not going to get overly rich but there is no reason you can not achieve very good money .
I keep saying it we must get away from Dexters being crossed we can only take Dexter beef to its heights if it is Dexter beef .
Cross them if you wish and they are a very good animal to cross with , I don't want to hear its a cross ,
Dexter crosses can reach very good weights but when they are crossed why do people emphasise its a dexter cross why not just say its an Angus , a limousine , a shorthorn cross , I will tell you because dropping in the Dexter name is expected to give it a premium .
The butcher , the restauranteur and the member of the public that know their beef are quite able to take a full carcass , let's not mess about selling a box here and there lets get the price they are worth and furnish those with the full animal . This can i must admit only be done by marketing , marketing is now the main tool in selling . We are messing about in the Dexter world and it is about time it was rectified .
I know Dominic you think I am on a cloud but I know by getting continuity with Dexter breeders and educating them in marketing this will work .

[Rob R]

Robin your at it again! lol

I read what you have to say and have spoken to you about it. but i have to say i think you have all missed the point.

The reason why dexter cattle are sold at low prices is because they are not commercial cattle. It does not matter what anyone says about making a living from them or not, the buyers of commercial cattle will not buy them.
until you address that then there is little bottom to the market, so they will continue to trade low.

if i have to sell angus cattle quickly i take them to the market and i get a market price for them. if i were to do that with dexters i would get pocket change.
so to get a price for them you have to sell to the specialist buyer, and thats the point they are specialist. If the buyers arent looking you cant sell unless they are cheap.

i dont see how you can engineer sales to suit your needs, if you need to sell, you need to sell!

You could of course create such demand for dexter beef that finishing stock goes through the roof, that would filter down through the market. but dexter breeders and retailers are a disperate bunch.

i think you will have to put up with the prices for some time to come.

dominic

You make a good point about them not being 'commercial' cattle Dom, but it's not just Dexters but all native breeds that fall into this category. Yes Hereford & Angus have their schemes which help them along a bit, but outside of these schemes it is a waste of time taking native breeds ad hoc to market unless they have BB, Lim or a few other continentals on the passport, certainly in Yorkshire marts.

Regarding addressing this point, by far the biggest issue to overcome is inconsistency. The breed standard, as it stands, is not producing a consistent product for either the butcher or the breeder. Very few sellers of Dexter cattle give any stats in adverts other than age, and in a breed that has so much variability within it stats are of paramount importance if a 'commercial' buyer is to hitch up the trailer and spend money on fuel. If they then arrive and find Laurel & Hardy they're going to want to pay less than if they arrive to find two animals of the same size and/or they know that the animal is 250kg beforehand, having been fed on barley and haylage, for example.

My advice here and above comes from my experience as a buyer, I'm not aiming to annoy or upset anyone; The wording is also important in ads - facts about the animals need to be accurate. I know that not everyone understands the genetics of cattle but if you're going to write an advert, please check it for accuracy and make sure that you understand the mechanics of, say the inheritance of short leg or the polled gene, before mentioning it. You don't want to pass on inaccuracies to potential buyers and you don't want to appear as if you don't know what you're doing to more knowledgeable buyers. You also don't want to set yourself up for being asked questions to which you don't know the answer.

Words like 'nice' and 'lovely' are adjectives that require a noun and how they are used do say a lot about the seller and the animal. If you can pinpoint why it is a nice heifer that will do more good than just saying that it is a nice heifer, as that alone just says to me that the seller likes their animal. 'Good temperament' or 'excellent mothering ability' are better ways to describe them. Photos are very useful but they have to be good ones, clear, bright and with the animal standing naturally, not doing some kind of yoga, being held 'perfectly' or a perfect headshot that shows none of the body. The worst I have ever seen was of a group of sheep that were behind hurdles, with a dog sat between the camera and the hurdles & the image was so blurred that they looked like clouds on the horizon. Current photos are also essential - I don't want to know how it looked as a calf or sixth months ago on summer grass.

The butcher , the restauranteur and the member of the public that know their beef are quite able to take a full carcass , let's not mess about selling a box here and there lets get the price they are worth and furnish those with the full animal . This can i must admit only be done by marketing , marketing is now the main tool in selling . We are messing about in the Dexter world and it is about time it was rectified .
I know Dominic you think I am on a cloud but I know by getting continuity with Dexter breeders and educating them in marketing this will work .

If decent prices are to be achieved within these parameters the breeder must know what they're going to do with the offspring before they put the bull in. It's no good breeding and hoping, it requires you to know who your buyer is and what they want, planning for sire selection, weaning, feeding, etc. all to supply your end market within the budget you have to deal with. There's no point spending a fortune on the very best feeding if it ends up costing you more than you can realistically expect to receive back, even if you do achieve a huge carcass. If Dexters are to compete against continentals or Angus/Herefords breeders need to work on both consistency AND the bottom line before they push all the responsibility onto the marketing.

I've made a couple of suggestions that individual breeders can adopt which don't rely upon any cohesion between breeders, namely that if you're aiming for the smallholder/new cattle person as your target market then offering to take back stock in the event of a change of heart, loss of land or a realisation that they've taken on more than they can handle is needed to prevent you you being undercut by your own animals.

The second suggestion, of established breeders going out there and buying all the 'cheap' stock and either beefing or marking them up as appropriate is something we can all do, right now, and make a bit of money in the process providing that the animals being offered up for sale really are cheap, which brings me back to my previous post; I posted the current average prices from this site, and to me they don't look bad. Can we discuss what price would breeders wish to achieve for their animals? Pinpointing what the goal is is the first step towards achieving it.

[domsmith]

I dont think you are right Rob about all native breeds. my angus cattle are keenly sought when i take them to market.
I doubt i make a profit selling them but isnt that par for the course.

That is also one of the problems, no one makes money in cattle or beef, so why should a Dexter breeder. there are going to be some big changes coming for the livestock sector as the new sfp regime comes in. i think scotland will be very hard hit as we move to area based subsidy.

that aside a good examle of the problems we are facing with dexters happened this very day! as you know i am selling a few. the steers are sold but i have the heifers left. i got an email asking how much i want for them. these are 20month old pure breds. i said i wanted them away quick so would take £300 each or an offer on the lot. the reply was "a bit pricey for me". WHAT!! where you expecting me to pay you.

[Rob R]

I dont think you are right Rob about all native breeds. my angus cattle are keenly sought when i take them to market.
I doubt i make a profit selling them but isnt that par for the course.

No, it isn't par for the course, it just proves what I'm saying about native breeds needing an outlet before they're bred.

I don't want to give the impression that I'm making loads of money, I'm not, but we're aware that some improvements in efficiency & productivity (not bigger cattle!) have to potential to make a huge difference to the bottom line. There are cattle farmers out there making money but they're only achieving this with attention to detail, identifying where they are making money and where they're losing it.

[domsmith]

Rob i am sure you are the exception being retailer and all things in between. but its well documented on how much each suckler looses each year and i dont doubt it.
Its sfp keeping most suckler herds afloat.
i would think any farmer dealing in belgian blues would be loosing more than most.

as for my own business it gives me a living so a profit technically but i dont do it for the money, most people are envious of my lifestyle.

d

[Rob R]

I'm not an exception Dom, everyone is capable of working out how much it's costing/making providing they monitor the costs and attribute them to the enterprise. I track my income for the farm and retail side separately, and the winter of 2012/13 really dragged everything down into making an overall loss. This past year has been better for the farm, but the retail side has struggled on the back of high cattle prices. We identified a big problem with high fixed costs and throughout 2013 I was looking at how I could reduce them as much as practical.

The average figures in the FW, for England, show potential. The worst thing you can do, I find, is to get too bogged down by how bad things are - although you are doing better than most to be making a living, many farmers are just living off their assets. It's better to just take inspiration from the positive articles and change what you're doing to try and be more like them, and less like everyone else. The most important thing though is to measure how you're doing before a change as well as after, and not change too many things all at once, so that you can attribute the right changes to the positive (or negative) outcomes.

[Rob R]

Good news for Scottish farm incomes showing improvement this year too.

[Rob R]

Do anyone have any thoughts upon how far out, from what they should be, the current average prices are for the site?

[robin walker]

We all know as we have stated that good Dexter cattle prices are far too low , Rob went to the trouble of working out selling averages , I was interested to see that the colour of an animal takes presedense , it confirms that many Dexters are being bought more as a novelty , there is no difference in whether it is black , red or otherwise when it comes to producing good beef , however a Dun animal perceives a higher value .
Let's get rid of this fallacy along with our animals being attached to the name of those that are crossed , there is no other Dexter than a pure Dexter .
I said previously that marketing is the key to selling in this modern world and it is marketing properly that will raise the profile of Dexter beef .
Every Dexter aphiliated group to the Society has the opportunity of obtaining £500 each . Why doesn't every group amalgamate and request £100 each , put this towards a UK promotion on PURE DEXTER BEEF ?, possibly a tasteful striking poster ( excuse the pun ) that the specialist butcher , restauranteur etc using PURE DEXTER BEEF can use to push the quality of our product above others . There are other promotional things that could be thought about I am sure . Thinking caps on . We as pure Dexter breeders are the only ones in charge of the PURE DEXTER destiny .

[domsmith]

Do anyone have any thoughts upon how far out, from what they should be, the current average prices are for the site?

I think i would be happy with the eifer prices if thats what they are getting 4-500 seems sensible

cows in calf , 6-800 would be fine.

bulls who cares i dont

steers depending on age 5-600

in my humble opinion!

[victorfirst]

Can i ask when we will see Mcdonalds selling Dexter burgers?. Bit off the point but AA cows were not popular until they were marketed and made commercial. Push the low input higher return argument especially as feed price and grass become harder to get. Look at our weather now, how much must it cost to keep feeding those high input cattle in houses?? Makes it alot harder to make money
If you got a couple of commercial breeders would that not help

WE NEED HELP FROM DRAGONS DEN

[Rob R]

We all know as we have stated that good Dexter cattle prices are far too low , Rob went to the trouble of working out selling averages , I was interested to see that the colour of an animal takes presedense , it confirms that many Dexters are being bought more as a novelty , there is no difference in whether it is black , red or otherwise when it comes to producing good beef , however a Dun animal perceives a higher value .
Let's get rid of this fallacy along with our animals being attached to the name of those that are crossed , there is no other Dexter than a pure Dexter .
I said previously that marketing is the key to selling in this modern world and it is marketing properly that will raise the profile of Dexter beef .
Every Dexter aphiliated group to the Society has the opportunity of obtaining £500 each . Why doesn't every group amalgamate and request £100 each , put this towards a UK promotion on PURE DEXTER BEEF ?, possibly a tasteful striking poster ( excuse the pun ) that the specialist butcher , restauranteur etc using PURE DEXTER BEEF can use to push the quality of our product above others . There are other promotional things that could be thought about I am sure . Thinking caps on . We as pure Dexter breeders are the only ones in charge of the PURE DEXTER destiny .

And how much do you envisage the price of Dexter beef being as a result of good marketing Robin? And isn't the sticker scheme just the first step in a wider marketing of Dexter beef by the society, or have I got that wrong? Personally I think a 50% increase in prices per kg would see a sustainable price, but I'd also wager that it'd make Dexter too uncompetitive against other breeds.