Do you have a specific 'type'?

[Rob R]

Sad, but true; just for fun, we have an informal game that I'm going to call 'Cattleships'. When we go to a sale, I print out the catalogue in advance and annotated it to identify any Dexters that you might see in our herd, based purely upon their pedigrees and past experience. Then on the day my wife and I look at all the animals in the pens and she, having not seen the catalogue or pedigrees, identifies any animals that look like a 'Rosewood' cow. Recently, at York, we got a 100% sucess rate, which I think says a lot about the value of pedigree breeding records!

[ann]

As no one has replied to this I thought i would try and generate a bit of intrest.

Everyone has different views on what type of dexter suits their situation. If you show then you are going to try and either breed short dexters or small non short dexters, so as you would go to shows you will be able to identify which style of dexters suits your type.

Some show people still register short bulls and use them, something that I personally can't get my head round as although short bull calves mature much quicker and do look the part in the calf classes as an animal they have a gentic defect so why breed from them. (Just my personal opinion and it one I will never waver from)

Non short bulls will throw short calves to short cows and if you never used a short bull again it will take a very long time to breed that gene out of your herd if you have short females.

However this type may, probably is not be suitable for some one who requires stock to breed for their farm shop or beef box system, conservation grazing or similar. So they are going to go down the non short route. However non short bulls are worth a great deal more re meat value and some people just don't seem to realize that if you pay pea nuts for something you will get monkey's so they go to the sales and buy a bull they know nothing about. Although rob says he can identify his type by pedigree's, how many people actually know what is in their cattles pedigree's! When i started in Dexters they where few on the ground and people who had been in the breed much longer that me where happy to share information, or you found out the hard way by using semen and discovering that the offspring grew up with defects which in your opinion where unacceptable.

I know either personally every animal in my herds pedigrees, either by visiting the sires or breeding them myself. I wonder how many people who have come into the breed in the last 10yrs can say that, as now the national herd is so much greater.

My personal list of definite requirements are
1 An animal which looks like a dexter, not an A.A head wise. Or a commercial rump wise.
2 Must have good feet and legs and walk correctly
3 must have a good udder with nicely spaced teats and still have a good udder at 10yrs old
and produce lots of easily drawing milk.
4 Good toplines
Any bull I produce must be from a cow with a good udder, easy calving dam and have good conformation. And most importantly both dam and sire must have good temperaments.
I personally do not have a problem if my cows are top size. I originally come from farming stock and like a cow which looks like a miniature cow, and believe me mine do as I currently have 17 commercial heifers at the other side of my fence and they are huge compared to my dexters, although my bull is looking longingly over the fence, not a cow squashed into a smaller frame

Hopefully Rob this will get the ball rolling for you By the way looking at the prices at York market it seemed to me that the unregistered made as much as the registered, correct me if I'm wrong as I miss the show & sale this time.

[Rob R]

Hopefully Rob this will get the ball rolling for you By the way looking at the prices at York market it seemed to me that the unregistered made as much as the registered, correct me if I'm wrong as I miss the show & sale this time.

Thanks for the reply!

As regards the prices at York it was a little misleading, as many of the cows and one heifer in the un-registered section were actually pedigree animals with unregistered calves (equally there were cows & heifers in the registered section with unregistered calves/in calf to a non-pedigree bull). However, when you include the pedigrees entered in the non-ped section it actually changes from slightly higher average on the pedigrees to slightly higher on the non! However, the top prices were improved when you include all pedigree animals.

There aren't really enough animals in the sale to be statistically significant or to compare like for like, but there did seem to be a lack of pedigree buyers attending the sale, so the "non-pedigree" buyers end up skewing the prices by buying both.

I've said it before, and it may not be popular but the pedigree breeders who don't attend sales and don't bid are only helping pedigree animals to be low priced. Selling private may be better for a number of reasons but the sales are the 'public' price that everyone sees and heavily influence what outsiders perceive to be a fair price for Dexters. Most other breeds seem happy to bid the decent pedigree animals in a sale up and hit the headlines, but we don't seem to do that in Dexters. I tried but there was noone to bid against. Not that I want to de-rail my own thread...

[Louisa Gidney]

I've got two types. The non shorts are like Twinkleberry in the other thread. This is a long-lived family and I'm not retaining any more heifers from this line as it's scary to think how old I'll be when baby heifers reach 19, when the oldest cow of this line was put down as she wasn't holding in calf anymore.
The shorts are like the Vycanny and Grinstead cows. One ought to be able to photoshop one of my cows into a photo of those herds without the intrusion being obvious. This is the type that I'm planning to keep from now on. I've used a short-leg bull from this type on a non-short cow and got a gorgeous little short-leg heifer that I will be keeping.

[Saffy]

I like non shorts that are short in my herd ...I realised I had a type when I bought the cow on the left several years ago. I found her in a mixed herd of all shapes and sizes, liked her and asked if I could buy her. She reminded me of the cow on the right although when I bought her she was quite thin. The dun colour is also very nice but I don't think I prefer it to black or red.

[Rob R]

I took this short film of the cows the other day and star of the show is Louisa's Twinkleberry - I don't think I need to point her out...

[Louisa Gidney]

For the technologically challenged, how does one access the film.

[Rob R]

The words 'short film' should be clickable (if I've done it right)

[Louisa Gidney]

I did that and got a message to open in another window. Then it said it was private but to login to Youtube. Then it didn't recognise my email address.

[Rob R]

Sorry, my fault, it should work now.

[LISA]

If someone could create a bovine version of Daniel Craig or "Gleb" (the Russian Dancer from strictly) that would suit my specific type visually very well - would sell well at auction too!

[Duncan MacIntyre]

Lisa don't tell me you are still dancing about in that cow show coat you bought at the AGM auction years ago?

Duncan (still got the bull coat)

[Saffy]

Cow and bull coats ...dancing my mind boggles, I think a pic is in order!

[Saffy]

OR...we could have a Daniel Craig - bull looky likey photo competition - judged obviously by Lisa... well who else would be qualified. Sorry I digress, I must be in a particularly silly mood. But it would be good fun!

Stephanie

[Rob R]

This certainly isn't the vein I envisaged the thread taking when I started it.