Yay! We Mostly ALL Agree - Dexter Traits

[cascade]

We should all be selecting for these important Dexter traits, generation after generation:

1. Bulls MUST be VERY friendly and VERY manageable, with lots of personality

2. Cows MUST be sweet and let us work with their newborn calves (tagging/weighing, etc), and should have lots of personality.

3. Dexters must be COMPACT (not too large, not too small)  Bulls between 38"-44" at 3 years.

4. Dexters must be Black, Dun, or Red... no white other than near udders up to navel.....horns are great, polled is MUCH better than de-horning.

5. Dexters must be Healthy and Hardy - can thrive and easily calve WITHOUT much shelter (other than trees/shade). Can thrive without a lot of chemicals, without a lot of vet work, without a lot of shots.  Should have STRONG immune systems.

6. Dexters must be Thrifty - can thrive on forage and minerals alone WITHOUT grain supplements.

7. Dual purpose and productive... Beefy, and milky enough, but not so milky that they MUST be milked.

8. Lots of good general cattle conformation (sound udders, sound feet, strong backs, correct legs, good tracking, masculine bulls, etc.)

9. Dexters should be long-lived... Cows should make it to 18+ healthy productive years with no early arthritis, Bulls should make it to 13+ healthy years (if you don't eat them first).

I love this true-short non-chondro bull, about 41" at 3 years, his wonderful mother was very long-lived, she had 17 calves in 19 years, no assist, no death, no problems, exceptional udder attachment and teat size, shape and placement and exceptional consistent quality of offspring.  This bull breeds true and when bred to a similar cow, every calf will be similar.



This true-short non-chondro red polled A2/A2 bull was 43 pounds at birth, easily born to a first-time mom with no help, friendly as a puppy, 42" at 3 years, never had any shots of any sort, no vaccines, no de-worming, no shelter except trees, just grass (rotationally grazed) and hay and minerals but no supplements, tons of personality, VERY easy to manage.... his sire is 11 years old and going strong, his mother is 9 years young and is very friendly and very milky with a nice udder.   This bull breeds true and every calf is similar.

[jamshundred]

Kirk

This is a second request. 

Please stop  posting large pictures.  Resize them so the available space does not fill up.   I am asking you again to please remove the duplicates and decrease the size of the originals.  Please

judy

[cascade]

These photos arent stored on this website, so they aren't using any space here. They are stored on other websites and just linked here. Check your settings on this board to verify you have set them up correctly.

If you need help, ask Olga how she does it on the real dexter board. She doesnt have the problem you seem to be having.

[cascade]

*

[jamshundred]

Kirk,

Do you remember when photos were removed from Olga's board because the available space was filling up? Even though some of them came from off-site? ( Or so I am told - I am as non-savvy about electronics as they come).   I believe they wanted her to buy additional space?  

Here is "my" solution. Reduce the size of the photos please. And pretty please. Or delete the duplicates when you want to repost them in another thread. Would that be doable and workable for you?

Judy

[cascade]

Jan 1, 2015 14:41:54 GMT jamshundred said:

Kirk,

Do you remember when photos were removed from Olga's board because the available space was filling up? Even though some of them came from off-site? ( Or so I am told - I am as non-savvy about electronics as they come).   I believe they wanted her to buy additional space?  

Here is "my" solution. Reduce the size of the photos please. And pretty please. Or delete the duplicates when you want to repost them in another thread. Would that be doable and workable for you?

Judy

Proboards gives each board a small allotment of space to be used to store photos directly on proboards.  This flawed feature is for folks who don't have photo's stored elsewhere.   When that space started filling up on Olga's board, Olga asked folks to switch to the other method of storing photo's in photobucket or elsewhere and just linking to those photos and NOT uploading them to proboards.  That completely solved the space problem and avoided the $charges.  

Regardless of the size of photos loaded on this board, you will eventually use up all the available free photo space on this board, so you might as well just have everyone store their photo's elsewhere, and just link to them as I have been doing all along.

As I said, I've NEVER directly uploaded any photo's to any of the proboards, so I've never used ANY of the photo space at all.

[cascade]

Now back to the subject...   I think it's pretty impressive that we all seem to agree on this:

We should all be selecting for these important Dexter traits, generation after generation:

1. Bulls MUST be VERY friendly and VERY manageable, with lots of personality

2. Cows MUST be sweet and let us work with their newborn calves (tagging/weighing, etc), and should have lots of personality.

3. Dexters must be COMPACT (not too large, not too small) Bulls between 38"- 44" at 3 years.

4. Dexters must be Black, Dun, or Red... no white other than near udders up to navel.....horns are great, polled is MUCH better than de-horning.

5. Dexters must be Healthy and Hardy - can thrive and easily calve WITHOUT much shelter (other than trees/shade). Can thrive without a lot of chemicals, without a lot of vet work, without a lot of shots. Should have STRONG immune systems.

6. Dexters must be Thrifty - can thrive on forage and minerals alone WITHOUT requiring grain supplements.

7. Dual purpose and productive... Beefy, and milky enough, but not so milky that they MUST be milked.

8. Lots of good general cattle conformation (sound udders, sound feet, strong backs, correct legs, good tracking, masculine bulls, etc.)

9. Dexters should be long-lived... Cows should make it to 18+ healthy productive years with no early arthritis, Bulls should make it to 13+ healthy years (if you don't eat them first).

[Donlin Stud]

Kirk I am going to buy into this:
And others are more than welcome to put me back on the right path should I have strayed in my answers. (Its all a learning curve
…………………..
You wrote - Dexters are a small breed.
Yes they are a naturally occurring small breed which has not been miniaturised.

2. The preferred phenotype is small/compact with not-too-long of legs
The preferred phenotype as stated in breed standards is small/compact with legs of moderate length in proportion to body size.
The key words are ‘moderate’ and ‘proportion’

3. Ideal Dexter bulls should be between 38" and 44" at three years of age, no more, no less
The Dexter breed standards from around the world vary slightly in their determinations of what the acceptable Dexter height range is.

I am yet to find a standard that will refuse registration due to a Dexter not falling between the two figures which is why the majority of associations have the word ‘preferred’:

Height should always be taken into consideration when assessing the overall conformation of an animal

4. While a compact phenotype in dexters IS preferred, the lethal chondro gene is NOT preferred.
The Dexter breed evolved over centuries of evolution where the (only recently discovered) Chondrodysplasia gene played a large part in the breed’s appeal and desirability by man especially those located on small parcels of land as they selected only the smallest animals for the continuance of milk and meat for the family.

A gentleman from England was so infatuated with the naturally small bovines, the Dexter, as a breed was born.

5. You can have the preferred compact dexters with shorter legs WITHOUT the lethal chondro gene
Yes one can, but to deny the existence of the Chondrodysplasia gene in the Dexter breed is “modernising” and “manipulating” the breed into something that it has never been.

Breed Objectives should always be:

•    To encourage improvement in the quality of Dexter Cattle herds.
•    To encourage the preservation of the natural characteristics and traits in Dexter cattle.


6. 93% of tested dexters are free of chondro gene, only 7% have the lethal chondro gene according to the online database
How sad there is already manipulating a Heritage Horned centuries old breed into something that has never been deemed the norm.

Since America does not mandatory testing for registration, those figures cannot be a true representation of the actual.

Many test every animal who has the potential to carry the gene, such as ourselves, but it is not recorded against their pedigree because we don’t submit the tests to the only accepted lab, choosing instead to use an internationally recognised lab.

7. The Fake-short Chondro Dwarfs throw MUCH taller animals 50% of the time and throw lethal gene carriers the other 50% of the time
The term “fake-short” is a term of personal opinion and is not in the many writings of the breed.

Of course a Dexter who carries a copy of the Chondrodysplasia gene will be _on average_ up to 20% shorter in stature than a Dexter who does not carry a copy of the Chondrodysplasia gene – this was determined during the research to discover the cause of calf losses.

If a Dexter who carries the gene produces Dexters who are way outside the preferred heights as stated within the country’s breed standard, then I would say its ‘back to the drawing board for the breeding program’ Cause one has not yet ‘got it right’.

8. The True-Breeding True short non-Chrondro Dexters reproduce their short phenotypes consistently without the lethal chondro gene.
A Dexter who has the physical appearance of carrying the Chondrodysplasia gene but tests free can only be described as ‘modernised’ with ‘its phenotype manipulated from its origin solely to serve the desire to display what is not there. [the presence of the gene].

In the days before chondro testing was available, selecting for compactness often meant getting the chondro gene by accident even if you hated the gene.
If one ‘hated’ the gene they didn’t know existed [before the test was available] then one would have chosen another breed.

This actually drove many breeders, in the past, to select for longer legs just to try to avoid the lethal gene.
SOME Breeders did not begin to “select for longer legs just to try and avoid the lethal gene” until after the test was developed in the year 2000, and this was purely a knee-jerk reaction.

Until then, and only for the previous couple of decades, it was assumed that mating a long-legged to a short-legged Dexter _might_ reduce the possibility of calf loss. But it didn’t as there were still recordings being made of calf losses.

Until the year 2000 there was no guaranteed way of producing 100% live calves in the Dexter breed.

And the research never had the objective of changing the breed. The research was conducted to unravel and explain why calf losses occurred as there seemed no logical reason for it. 

The information derived from this research and the resulting DNA test is to utilised as unseen information and for the prevention of calf losses.
The intention was never to eliminate a unique, and desired by many around the world, trait of the Dexter

Now the test for chondro allows breeders to freely select for the preferred compact phenotype WITH shorter legs, but WITHOUT the lethal chondro gene.
The test also provides valuable information to successfully breed with the Chondrodysplasia gene without fear of calf losses.

Here is a preferred short phenotype Dexter WITHOUT the Chondro lethal gene (I believe this bull was around 41 inches at age three)
He certainly does NOT look like a Kerry Bull
No he does not look like a Kerry, but he does have a different phenotype when compared to a Dexter of 100 years ago who today may not have tested as carrying a copy of the Chondrodysplasia gene.

My two-bobs worth

[lonecowhand]

Hahaha-hahaha, Did any one else notice the reference to the "real dexter board"?

That's one way to make friends and influence people!

And there is no link to photos, they just come up, unlike the other Board.