Posted on 01/06/2009 6:48:36 AM PST by stillafreemind
The height of the Dexter bull is between 38 and 44 inches. The Dexter cow is between 36-42 inches. Because of their smaller size, some people mistakenly call them miniature. This is wrong. The Dexter Cattle Breed is a true breed. Dexters are, by nature, a smaller breed of cattle.
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iCows.
I don’t imagine that they’d be easy to come by.
Screw that! I don’t care how big the cow is, I care how much it farts! The feds are looking to tax cow farts now.
Show me a cow that doesn’t toot, then I’m interested.
Dexter Cattle are horned. Here’s an article about that.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/384235/dexter_cattle_horned_dehorned_and_polled.html?cat=58
Just the right size for the coyotes to snack on.
Hi Tiki..ya know I believe they are in every state now. The Dexter Cattle breed has enlarged alot and they aren’t that out of line on prices. $500 - $800 for a bull and $800 - $1200 for a bred cow is the usual range.
Coyotes won’t go near most Dexters. They are naturally horned for the most part.
We have 2 packs of coyotes. One on one side of the road and one on the other. We are blessed with a bull that has a nice set of horns and he is not shy. He and a couple of the cows will go out and challenge..while the others stay in a group with the calves. It’s awesome.
To be honest..we read on these Dexter Cattle for 2 years. We had White Park. I loved the big White Parks..but these Dexter Cattle are just worlds different. They love people, MUCH cheaper to raise, and the meat is great. They have won us over here. I cannot believe how popular they have gotten.
I have been looking at Dexters for our place (we have 7.5 acres in Central VA). They look to be a good fit.
Would it be OK for me to put my possum post on now?
Just kidding. This is an interesting post.
Sounds great. I just looked Virginia up on the ADCA (American Dexter Cattle Association) and it shows at least 375 animals are registered there.
I’ve got four, and they taste GREAT.
Nothing like grass fed beef.
If you have a chance to deal with this man...TAKE IT!! We live too far from you all..but I would love some of his stock and I would just plain love to meet this man.
Not having raised cattle before, when would be the best time of year to begin?
When you have pasture growing. Feeding cattle hay gets expensive in a hurry.
The Feds won’t even know you have only one or two, especially if you raise them for your own freezer beef.
If you don’t sell them at a sale barn, they won’t know jack.
Here’s a tip from production farmers: what Uncle doesn’t know won’t hurt you.
There are dairymen in the Twin Falls, ID area who have stacked up 1-ton hay bales in such a way that you cannot see into their dairies from the road, and they’re using hoop buildings so that you can’t see their herds from the air. These guys aren’t hiding one or two cattle - they’re hiding hundreds to thousands of head of dairy cattle.
All cattle fart and burp. Don’t sweat it. If you want to get a steer or two, ain’t no one gonna know you’ve got them unless you go bragging on it. Just make sure they have enough feed and water and they’ll stay pretty quiet. Let them run out of food and/or water and they’ll bellow until you do something about it - and then neighbors for a half-mile around will know there is a pissed-off bovine somewhere in the neighborhood.
If you can’t get into Dexters, a small Angus could be fed for the summer off 7.5 acres. Let’s assume your house+yard take up 1.5. That leaves one acre for your garden and 5 for pasture.
If you rotate a cow across the ground with a hot wire to prevent them from over-grazing the grass, you should be able to support one full-sized cow on 5 acres of grass there.
All the breeds of cattle from Scotland and Ireland tend to be thrifty and smaller-framed than the “continental” breeds that come from France/Germany/etc. The Celts had to make the most of what they had, which wasn’t much.
As a software developer I have had a chance to work with a couple of Dexter Breeders. They were good people to work with. We still market the herd management system to commercial and purebred breeders.
That’s what I was thinking. Thanks for confirming it. Gonna shoot for early spring.
Good lord man, it was a joke.
I actually moved from a farm I lived on for 12 years up here to the suburbs for my job. I went from 120 acres to a yard where I have to go pick up dog poop.
When times are better I will move back out. In Kansas you can still have cows in pastures... on roads where the only car that comes along that day is the mailman.
I have been here only two months but already I miss the stars at night.
Kind of depends on where you are, but basically when the weather is becoming mild, and there is enough for them to eat.
My four are dependant on hay at this time of the year, so I would not want to purchase any now because of that added expence, However, folks are in trouble right now and you may be able to pick some up cheap!
One cool thing to remember is they give about a gallon of Milk a day. More then we would use, so if we milked the remainder could be turned into Pig food.
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