Godstone Esmeralda - Traditionally Polled Legacy Dexter

[legendrockranch]

Thanks for your reply Hans, I see for you it's about the almighty dollar, something you used to accuse the the polled red breeders of doing. Your market WILL collapse sooner or later. The Dexters are a established breed, Your crosses are nothing more than that crosses. You say nothing about adding a genetic defect to another breed, by the way why didn't you answer my question "what is the purpose?"  Oh wait you did answer, " all the cash I'm raking in from these Highlands I'm breeding" There is one word that doesn't seem to be in your vocabulary "ethics"  The purpose of ethics is to define acceptable human behavior through knowing the types of actions, its consequences, and the limits of both humans and actions, as well as their acceptability.

May 19, 2019 16:16:37 GMT -5 lakeportfarms said:   You have no clue about our breeding program


What I do know about your breeding program was taken from your website:

We intentionally bred our chondro carrier (dwarf) Dexter bull to some of our finest Highland cows in the effort to inject the Dexter dwarf gene into our miniature Highland breeding program. The dwarf gene is dominant and is passed on to 50% of offspring, regardless of the breed/cross.



Midas has the Dexter chondro dysplasia gene and is a dwarf. He will remain a full miniature his entire life. We have been working very hard for many years on our dwarf Highland project, slowly increasing the percentage of Highland while retaining the Dexter chondro dysplasia gene.

edited to add:  Hans you might want to correct the way you spell chondrodysplasia on your website, there is no spacing between the o and d.  as shown on your website    chondro dysplasia

[lakeportfarms]

You must not have a sense of humor at all.  You completely miss the tongue in cheek and sarcasm about the money.  Maybe it is just projection, because that is how you view things yourself?

Sheril and I started this Miniature Highland project 15 years ago, concurrently with our first two Dexter purchases.  Our short leg bull bred our Highland cow (still on the farm today at 23 years old) and produced a little 50/50 chondro bull.  We looked at each other and said, "let's breed him back to our other Highlands and get higher percentage Highland, with the chondro gene".  A year or so later, we searched for and found a very small Highland bull in Connecticut, and drove out to look at him New Year's Eve.  We really liked him, and we drove back with him and his mother (both still here at 14 and 17 years old) in a snowstorm.  We did it for our own enjoyment, not because of the money.  We happen to love the look of Highland cattle, but wanted them more "Dexter sized".   Our Highland bull Thor, measured 39" at age 3, and 42" just a couple of days ago when we had him in the chute.  We've used him, and his son(s) to reduce our Highland sizes, in addition to the chondro breeding program.

I know the market for them will decline one day, but as with most things, it will decline for the breeders (I prefer to call them reproducers) that put no thought or effort into what they are doing. Sheril and I are both highly educated, good learners, and good thinkers.  We make an excellent team, and I have a sense of where the trends are going, and she keeps me on my toes with her own input.  I have a pretty good eye for cattle, but Sheril takes it to another level, is very observant, and sees a lot of subtle qualities (and faults) that I don't see, but I keep her honest about some of them when it comes making difficult choices about culling poor examples of either breed.

Dexters USED to be an established breed, but since the introduction of polled, it seems that now anything goes, and now it's just an established name.  Wasn't the slogan of the ADCA just a few short years ago "celebrate the diversity"?   What the hell kind of slogan is that?  It is the slogan of a breed that used to be considered a small homestead dual (triple) purpose cow, that had the breed name hijacked by some opportunists that decided that a polled version would be even better, along with all of the other baggage that came with it.  So a fresh mutation story was invented to justify a polled grandmother of an AI bull, where loopholes in the rules were exploited and legal action threatened to bring it to North America.  And then for years, no genotyping or parent verification was required in order to cash in.  Jersey cows to make better udders, Lowline Angus or Red Poll to improve beef characteristics, and no controls at all, for some of the breeders weren't willing to wait and do it the hard way.  Platinum opened the door for all of it.

Yesterday I drove three bulls to Great Lakes Sire to have three bulls collected.  One of the teaser steers that was needed to collect our bulls was small enough for our bulls to jump.  Seeing lots of polled Dexters over the years, even though we don't have any, I asked them where they got their Dexter teaser steer from.  I was a few mere miles from John Potter's farm, and I know he's had his bulls collected there, so I assumed they had probably obtained the teaser steer from his farm.  The answer was that it was actually a steer from a registered Lowline Angus herd.  Oops!  Doesn't that speak volumes about what has happened to the Dexter breed?  I bet there are a lot of polled Dexter owners that have to go through herd reductions hauling their Dexters to the sale barn and saying that they are unregistered or percentage Lowlines!  Some of them may be too large to even be considered Lowlines.  There is a Dexter right now on Facebook that Dexter owners are commenting it must have some Jersey in it.  Guess what breeder is heavy in the pedigree?

We just had a little 31/32nd chondro short leg Miniature Highland heifer born last evening.  We'll be keeping her, but I'm going to disappoint a lot of customers when news of her birth gets out.  Dexters just don't elicit that kind of response, especially now.  She's probably more pure Highland than some "pure" registered Dexters are Dexter.  I know, because we are the foundation breeders, and every generation has been genotyped and parent verified.  If I went to buy a polled Dexter I sure wouldn't have that kind of assurance.

Now I'm done with this thread.

[legendrockranch]

I deleted my own post.

[cascade]

Back to Esmeralda. She is very pure Dexter and she is heavily linebred back to Harley Poll, 1894 foundation Dexter

Polled Dexters trace back to the Irish Herdbooks.

Polled Dexters are very pure Dexters.

Polled = Pure Dexter