First Dexter Classified as EXCELLENT in the UK

[cascade]

This True-Short Dexter cow is the FIRST Dexter classified as EXCELLENT in Britain.

She's genetically horned and dun and does NOT carry the chondrodysplasia lethal gene.
A true-short little friendly Dexter cow like this can be bred on a similar bull and 100% of their offspring will be true-short

These true-short Dexters tend to live 18+ years and have 16+ calves in a lifetime. (chondro's tend to live short lives and die young)
You can have an entire natural herd of these and not worry about dead calves (after you've tested free of PHA and Chondro).
You won't have any LONG legs either.  They'll be 100% short in stature with short legs (and NO CHONDRO)




This cow comes from a closed herd based on a small number of individuals, so like all closed herds, their DNA genotypes tend to be a different from the greater breed at large.
 

[lakeportfarms]

Do you have one that looks like the cow you posted Kirk?  Well, in red or black because I don't think you have any duns.  I'd love to see a photo of your closest example that YOU own.

The photo you posted looks a lot like one of our cows.  Our cow is 14 years old so she's had a little wear and tear from a number of calves but she's still going strong.  I have several more that look a lot like her too.  But we're enjoying her NOW, not when I'm 85 years old and arthritic.

Edited to add:  By the way Kirk, you may want to get your facts straight.  The Woodmagic cow above is beautiful, but I don't think she is Petrel, who was the cow that was classified as excellent.  I'll see if I can find a photo of her to post here.

[lakeportfarms]

Here is another example.  We purchased Cedar 10 years ago as one of our first Dexter cows.  We didn't have to travel to England though, she was 2 hours drive over in Western Michigan.  We don't own her any longer, in a moment of stupidity we sold her a few years later to a Amish family of 9 who wanted a VERY tiny milk cow that produced 3-1/2 gallons/day for their family.  I guess we were taken by how nice the family was and wanted to help them out.  They weren't interested in registrations or transfers, and I saw them last September and they are still milking her and expecting a calf again this coming March.

I'd love to buy her back or trade them for another, but she's part of their family now and their 7 year old daughter rides her from the pasture to the milking stanchion.  Oh, and she's almost 17 years old so she's only got another year or so left in her anyway according to Kirk.  We do have her daughter who is 13 now.

I'd love to go out and take photos all day, but it's quite cold and snowy out there.  Cows that live in our type of climate have a lot more challenges than those that live in places like say, the Western Pacific Northwest at lower elevations, where it rarely or ever gets much colder than 30 degrees in the winter.  That is a mild day for us from November to March.

[lakeportfarms]

These are definitely photos of Petrel.  She looks a bit taller and larger in these don't you think?  Beautiful cow and look at the spring of rib from the front shot!






Petrel is in the middle of this photo:

[lakeportfarms]

I did want to add, though it's hard to tell without a measurable reference, I have a LOT of cows that are similar to the size or shorter of the Petrel photos in our herd of non-carriers. Many of them sired by or born to a dwarf. That first photo I posted shows a field fence so you can get a bit of an idea. Petrel is very mature, so you can't compare to the 3 year old cow. I would love to have any of these cows in my herd even though I love my Dwarfs. I could produce some really nice Dwarf Dexters out of them bred to a nice Dwarf bull.

[Deleted]

Yes petrel is a wonderful LEGACY cow. Why not just post her info and leave it at that. Instead you use her to further your agenda. Ok if thats the way it is than I will do the same. 
Lets not forget why we have these wonderful woodmagic cows. It is because of the breeder one who refused to allow any upgraded/polled animals into her herd.
I have a 85% woodmagic Legacy cow who looks much like her. She will be 20 this year and I believe this to be her last winter. Her daughter a slightly higher percentage woodmagic Legacy cow is the girl in my avatar. She will be having her second calf in March. She turns 3 at the end of July.

[lakeportfarms]

That's a good point Mike, Petrel is a LEGACY cow with horns (but de-horned). And I'd bet you're a lot closer with your heavily Woodmagic shorter non-carriers of Legacy and Traditional lines than Kirk is. Those couple of red cows that he's posted look fairly small, but we really don't know their ages for sure (they look a bit immature)and they don't have very full deep bodies.

[cascade]

Jan 16, 2015 15:08:28 GMT @dexterfarm said:

Yes petrel is a wonderful LEGACY cow.
Lets not forget why we have these wonderful woodmagic cows. It is because of the breeder one who refused to allow any upgraded/polled animals into her herd.
I have a 85% woodmagic Legacy cow who looks much like her. She will be 20 this year and I believe this to be her last winter. Her daughter a slightly higher percentage woodmagic Legacy cow is the girl in my avatar. She will be having her second calf in March. She turns 3 at the end of July.

I'm thrilled that you have some long-lived true-short genetics and don't have any known lethal genes.  I'm also happy that you're keeping the horns on instead of painfully dehorning them. 

Beryl Rutherford accomplished her Woodmagic herd by getting rid of the Chondrodysplasia lethal gene and breeding for true-short dexters.

She closed her herd very early on in order to keep the chondro gene out, and to keep dexters with too long-legs out, and to refine her herd to have truly short genetics.   The polled gene came along decades after she had already closed her herd.  Even if she loved the polled gene, she wouldn't break her closed-herd rule to bring in the polled gene.  She once said that she wished she had some red dexters and lamented that she wouldn't break her own closed-herd rule to bring red in (I believe she had some limited red in the early days, but lost it).

She was successful in developing the Woodmagic Herd because without that problematic chondro-lethal gene, she could easily select for the truly shortest dexters and eliminate the too-tall dexters from her herd over time.

Beryl got many black eyes from chondro-breeders attacking her and calling her all sorts of names when she proposed that you can have true-breeding short dexters WITHOUT the problematic chondro lethal gene. 

Beryl Rutherford was the person who helped educate me on the value of selecting for truly shorter-legged dexters.  She spent over 5 decades working on selecting for true-shorts. I'm only into it a little more than one decade, so I have a lot of work to do, but I'm happy with my progress so far.

This 4 year old true-short non-chondro cow on our farm is getting ready to have her 3rd calf this spring.  

[lakeportfarms]

Kirk, how exactly do you select to get short genetics without the chondro gene?  By culling those with too long legs?  Do you wait until the cow achieves mature size before you make that decision?  How do you know when a cow (or bull) has reached mature size?  Some cows and bulls mature at different rates, some grow quickly initially then slow down, some grow slowly at first and then have a growth spurt at a later age.

Much like humans mature at different rates.  I was one of the smallest boys in school, until between my junior and senior years in high school.  My voice changed at a much later age than my classmates.  There was no need to shave, I didn't have any facial hair.   I grew 6" in height between January of my junior year, and September at the start of my senior year, with most of the growth during the three months in summer. I went to being one of the tallest kids in my school at that time.

[genebo]

And not too long afterward, a commanding force on a bicycle. Hans is no meek little boy. He's a powerful man.

Who would have guessed it from what Hans tells of his early years.

Hans, why don't you post a link to your race against Nelson Vails, the World Champion?

It helps us to know what kind of person we are dealing with on a daily basis.

[lakeportfarms]

Ha!  You embarrass me Gene   Ok.... To give some background, our event was the match sprint, which is sort of like the 100 meter dash in track and field.  Except it's 1000 meters, and you can't ride it at full speed or the rider behind will simply use the draft and pass an exhausted rider at the end.  So the event is rather slow at first, and sometimes a lot of tactics are involved.  Some like to lead the race at the end, some like to ride from behind and use the draft to slingshot in the last few meters.

To give an idea of some of this, here is Nelson at the 1984 Olympics that year in one of his semi-final rides.
.


A few days following his Olympic rides that year, Nelson flew to Trexlertown, PA for the National Championships.  Nelson won, and I was third behind Les Barczewski.  Had the seedings been different, I think I would have beaten Les in the semis (I beat him the week earlier) and rode against Nelson in the finals instead. My first race against Nelson wasn't so great, but my second was much closer.  The second ride starts around 5:10

[cascade]

Jan 16, 2015 23:45:19 GMT lakeportfarms said:

Kirk, how exactly do you select to get short genetics without the chondro gene?  By culling those with too long legs?  Do you wait until the cow achieves mature size before you make that decision?  How do you know when a cow (or bull) has reached mature size?  Some cows and bulls mature at different rates, some grow quickly initially then slow down, some grow slowly at first and then have a growth spurt at a later age.

Much like humans mature at different rates.  I was one of the smallest boys in school, until between my junior and senior years in high school.  My voice changed at a much later age than my classmates.  There was no need to shave, I didn't have any facial hair.   I grew 6" in height between January of my junior year, and September at the start of my senior year, with most of the growth during the three months in summer. I went to being one of the talles

Slow maturing is a flaw to be corrected in cattle (in my opinion). I think it's important to select for early maturing animals. I like bulls, with substantial testicles, that are fully ready to breed at 11 - 12 months and heifers that are easily ready to get pregnant at 12-13 months (but I usually wait until 14 months).  
  
A short boy who's voice changed in the 5th grade and was shaving in the 6th grade, and was short and muscly and bearded in the 8th grade, and who's parents and siblings are all short,  is likely going to going to be one of the shorter boys in high school and college and old age, and he's likely going to have shorter, early maturing kids.

I think an easy approach to bringing down the true size of your herd is to just use early maturing shorter bulls (that have shorter siblings from shorter dams and sires).  A shorter early-maturing 2 year old bull, that has shorter sisters from their shorter mother, is likely going to throw shorter calves. 

While this sounds simple, the problem is that when you're also selecting for good udders and good feet and good dispositions  and good tail-sets, and good testicles and good male attachments and good everything else, you can't afford to just focus on size.   So it might take a couple of decades to get to where you're going.    I think that's why some people used the chondro-dwarfing gene to cheat on size.   They could take a nicely conformed large animal, slap a chondro-gene on it and create an instant short little show-winner.   But Chondro's don't breed true, so that instant short little show-winning chondro-cow can't reliably reproduce itself.  Most chondro-cows are dead ends, because they don't breed true.

The nice thing about non-chondro true-shorts is that they breed true and you can create a lasting legacy in dexters.  Your efforts to create quality true-shorts (that always meet the breed description) can be passed down through the generations.     

I'm expecting 20 calves in coming months... I'm hoping for all bulls from my best shortest moms.... because it will improve my odds of getting a shorter near-perfect bull for my next herd sire.  But I'll settle for heifers if I must.


     

[lakeportfarms]

So you're culling all of your Dexters that don't meet the goals you've set? You can't keep growing your herd indefinitely. Do you butcher them, or sell them off?

[cascade]

I cull bulls with significant flaws. I also prefer to cull bulls that don't meet my goals. I don't love to sell too young of animals, because you don't know how they will turn out. I recently gave a refund to a bull buyer because I didn't like how their young bull was turning out. I just put a red polled 2 year old bull in the freezer yesterday. He was pretty darn good, but had a flaw that nobody would have noticed but I didn't want him to pass his flaw along.

I prefer to cull cows that have significant flaws. But if they just need minor correction, I will keep them and correct myself, or sell to a buyer with instructions on what needs correcting and how to achieve it. I try to price animals according to their level of perfection. If a cow is too good to kill, but not good enough to be registered in our name, I'll sometimes sell as unregistered to someone wanting a good utility cow.

[lakeportfarms]

By the way you tiptoe around my question your radar is definitely on high threat level.

In your prior posts over the years you have always said that you heavily cull the Dexters that you produce which means either butchering them or selling them to somebody else.  In other threads you talk about selecting for short size, udder, feet, etc... which is basically a euphemism for butchering them or selling them to somebody else.  It appears that you are doing more of the latter, not the former by your response here.

You talk about leaving a lasting legacy with your herd in 20-30 years time.  Great for the buyers 20-30 years from now I guess, but what about your buyers today?  Isn't your legacy also what you are selling to people today?  And that could include overly large Dexters like the photo of the cow I posted (that Barb hates about me), or some of the others I've seen floating around that have poor udders, etc...

Like it or not, and I've been around a lot of Dexters from polled lines from different breeders so  I'm not just speculating here; the polled Dexter is noticeably larger in size than the horned Dexters that we originally acquired as the foundation of our herd.  Don't forget, we have been using a chondro bull over non-carrier cows (ZERO chance of bulldog calves). Many of these non-carrier cows we purchased at a fully mature age when owners have dispersed their herds; either due to age (of the owner), health reasons, or in some cases the cost and availability of hay.  We've looked at red polled herds, picked some nice ones (they didn't look so bad in person at first because we didn't really have any others to compare them to) and once we got them back into our pasture, finished the quarantine, and then let them out with the other non-carriers in our herd we said OH S%@$, boy, are they are BIG compared to our others, and they are ALWAYS at the hay feeder and the first to greet me at the gate when I bring out food in the snowy and frigid winter of Michigan.  

(By the way, as I look out the windows now there is a line of freighters in the lake, waiting for the Canadian and U.S Coast Guard icebreakers to break up the ice to allow them to move.  Last year's ice just missed a record, and this year's ice is 13% ahead of last year.  Lake Superior had ice in the lake all the way to mid-June.)

You have posted critical of Blessings Farm's comment about the Grinstead herd not being a herd at all, because others were in graves or hidden behind the barn.  First of all, why were the others hidden behind the barn, and why is it that the clearly Dwarf cows and bull were the ones filmed?  Why not the other way around?
Second, that was a different era, as was the Woodmagic era.  Just as the chondro test can help you eliminate chondrodysplasia from your herd, it can also help you identify the status of your Dexters and help you select FOR Dwarf Dexters without the losses.  So the choices Beryl Rutherford may have made sense back then, but today they can be made with the simple process of pulling some tail hairs and doing some inexpensive testing.

A herd on your farm is what you want it to be.  There is no rule that says you have to have them all be one type.  I can have my Dwarf herd, and I can have my long legged herd.  Would you feel better if I registered another farm name, transferred and registered all of long legged Dexters into that one to keep them separate from my Dwarf herd? I have Scottish Highlands on our property...are they a Dexter herd?  No, they are a Highland fold (herd).

Getting back to culling or the euphemism for it, selection, I am doing a lot of it.  I want my herd of VERY short Dwarf Dexters, so I heavily cull or select those that don't meet my criteria to keep my heights down.  Remember I started out with small Dexters to begin with, and don't have to work so hard on height.  My Dwarf Dexters are also MUCH more pronounced than many other Dwarf Dexters that I've seen in other herds.  This is the phenotype we like so much, and I'll agree with you that with some Dwarf Dexters I've seen, I think "what is the point in dealing with Chondrodysplasia if that is the result you get?"   But you haven't seen ours in person of course, your (limited if at all) experience has been with the longer legged Dwarf Dexter, which was probably the result of a Dwarf used to try to reduce the height of a too tall Dexter to begin with.  See, we can agree on something.

My selection (culling) does not have to pass excessively large Dexters on to other Dexter owners, because they are not too large to begin with.  I don't have to hide my heights, or leave the owner with the impression that the Dexter they purchased isn't desirable enough for my own herd.  I don't have to confuse them with a long laundry list of things they need to work on to make it a better Dexter.  After all the hardest of which is height because that yearling Dexter doesn't look so big to the buyer, so they don't think about it at the time.  And on our farm, they are going to be super sensitive about height, because they just walked through our herd of 30 Dwarf Dexters.

If they ask why I sell, it's a simple answer...we have a herd of Dwarf Dexters, and the long leg doesn't fit in with them and we want to limit the number of long legs that we have.  They may want that herd of short Dexters themselves, but they understand that they are rare and highly prized by their owners as a result.  If they want it right away they may pass us over and go find them elsewhere.  Most will get a Dwarf Dexter bull along with some long leg cows to begin their journey of creating their own Dwarf Dexter herd, and most new to the breed will get a Dwarf Dexter bull because they prefer his mature size over the mature long-leg bull in the adjacent pasture.  As they get more experience with cows, their confidence increases from the handling of their Dwarf Dexter bull, and the  intimidation factor of a long legged Dexter bull declines at the same time so they can then make the transition to a short cow herd with a long bull if they choose.  Some never do...they love their full of personality but not scary Dwarf Dexter bull, and many prefer the long legged Dexter cow for ease of milking.

Even though it's easy to do we don't make them fat (except for the steers), and we keep our Dwarf Dexters in a separate group so they don't get beaten up and pushed around by Dexters that have longer legs and are more physically active (remember physical activity burns calories and requires more calories to keep or increase weight).  This helps the Dwarf Dexters avoid injuries a bit better.  If you doubt this, take your Dexters and run them with a herd of Simmental's, and you'll see what I mean.

I am calling them long legs, because that is what they are compared to the Dwarf Dexter.  I don't care how short you get your Dexters, you'll never, even in 30 years, be able to duplicate the results we have now with our Dwarf (short leg) herd of Dexters.  They will always have longer legs, and for me the standard of the breed is the Dwarf, just as it was with the champion Grinstead Herd video that I posted.

[jamshundred]

Wow! and. Wow!

I have read this response from Hans and much of the thread twice and going back for another. THIS post/thread  singularly exemplifies why censorship Is unacceptably restrictive. The opinions of Kirk are challenging each of us in various ways. Would Hans have ever written such a powerful and thoughtful presentation/debate without the opposing viewpoints he felt compelled to address?

Wow!

Judy

Hans, my generation rode our bikes everywhere, but I had never watched a bicycle race until I watched the two tapes you posted.  Boy the years fly by don't they! That was fun to watch. . .even though you said on the thread you lost. . . I was sitting here rooting for you like crazy!

[Deleted]

Jan 16, 2015 23:03:30 GMT cascade said:

Jan 16, 2015 15:08:28 GMT @dexterfarm said:

Yes petrel is a wonderful LEGACY cow.
Lets not forget why we have these wonderful woodmagic cows. It is because of the breeder one who refused to allow any upgraded/polled animals into her herd.
I have a 85% woodmagic Legacy cow who looks much like her. She will be 20 this year and I believe this to be her last winter. Her daughter a slightly higher percentage woodmagic Legacy cow is the girl in my avatar. She will be having her second calf in March. She turns 3 at the end of July.

I'm thrilled that you have some long-lived true-short genetics and don't have any known lethal genes.  I'm also happy that you're keeping the horns on instead of painfully dehorning them. 

Beryl Rutherford accomplished her Woodmagic herd by getting rid of the Chondrodysplasia lethal gene and breeding for true-short dexters.

She closed her herd very early on in order to keep the chondro gene out, and to keep dexters with too long-legs out, and to refine her herd to have truly short genetics.   The polled gene came along decades after she had already closed her herd.  Even if she loved the polled gene, she wouldn't break her closed-herd rule to bring in the polled gene.  She once said that she wished she had some red dexters and lamented that she wouldn't break her own closed-herd rule to bring red in (I believe she had some limited red in the early days, but lost it).

She was successful in developing the Woodmagic Herd because without that problematic chondro-lethal gene, she could easily select for the truly shortest dexters and eliminate the too-tall dexters from her herd over time.

Beryl got many black eyes from chondro-breeders attacking her and calling her all sorts of names when she proposed that you can have true-breeding short dexters WITHOUT the problematic chondro lethal gene. 

Beryl Rutherford was the person who helped educate me on the value of selecting for truly shorter-legged dexters.  She spent over 5 decades working on selecting for true-shorts. I'm only into it a little more than one decade, so I have a lot of work to do, but I'm happy with my progress so far.

This 4 year old true-short non-chondro cow on our farm is getting ready to have her 3rd calf this spring.  

I never said she was a true short. I said she looks like her. Her body shape her color and she is also a very good producer. She is also the biggest cow I have by a lot. She is very proportionate and very large. She also a big puppy she will follow any stranger anywhere if she just gets a little pet. At 19 she is between 45" and 46" I dont have a good way to measure so cant say for sure. Not all woodmagics are short. there is some tall genes in there.
She is taller than we prefer but I do believe that a non dwarf should be at the upper end of the sizes standard and the dwarf should be on the lower end.

[cascade]

Jan 17, 2015 11:32:04 GMT lakeportfarms said:

By the way you tiptoe around my question your radar is definitely on high threat level.

In your prior posts over the years you have always said that you heavily cull the Dexters that you produce which means either butchering them or selling them to somebody else.  In other threads you talk about selecting for short size, udder, feet, etc... which is basically a euphemism for butchering them or selling them to somebody else.  It appears that you are doing more of the latter, not the former by your response here.

You talk about leaving a lasting legacy with your herd in 20-30 years time.  Great for the buyers 20-30 years from now I guess, but what about your buyers today?  Isn't your legacy also what you are selling to people today?  And that could include overly large Dexters like the photo of the cow I posted (that Barb hates about me), or some of the others I've seen floating around that have poor udders, etc...

Like it or not, and I've been around a lot of Dexters from polled lines from different breeders so  I'm not just speculating here; the polled Dexter is noticeably larger in size than the horned Dexters that we originally acquired as the foundation of our herd.  Don't forget, we have been using a chondro bull over non-carrier cows (ZERO chance of bulldog calves). Many of these non-carrier cows we purchased at a fully mature age when owners have dispersed their herds; either due to age (of the owner), health reasons, or in some cases the cost and availability of hay.  We've looked at red polled herds, picked some nice ones (they didn't look so bad in person at first because we didn't really have any others to compare them to) and once we got them back into our pasture, finished the quarantine, and then let them out with the other non-carriers in our herd we said OH S%@$, boy, are they are BIG compared to our others, and they are ALWAYS at the hay feeder and the first to greet me at the gate when I bring out food in the snowy and frigid winter of Michigan.  

(By the way, as I look out the windows now there is a line of freighters in the lake, waiting for the Canadian and U.S Coast Guard icebreakers to break up the ice to allow them to move.  Last year's ice just missed a record, and this year's ice is 13% ahead of last year.  Lake Superior had ice in the lake all the way to mid-June.)

You have posted critical of Blessings Farm's comment about the Grinstead herd not being a herd at all, because others were in graves or hidden behind the barn.  First of all, why were the others hidden behind the barn, and why is it that the clearly Dwarf cows and bull were the ones filmed?  Why not the other way around?
Second, that was a different era, as was the Woodmagic era.  Just as the chondro test can help you eliminate chondrodysplasia from your herd, it can also help you identify the status of your Dexters and help you select FOR Dwarf Dexters without the losses.  So the choices Beryl Rutherford may have made sense back then, but today they can be made with the simple process of pulling some tail hairs and doing some inexpensive testing.

A herd on your farm is what you want it to be.  There is no rule that says you have to have them all be one type.  I can have my Dwarf herd, and I can have my long legged herd.  Would you feel better if I registered another farm name, transferred and registered all of long legged Dexters into that one to keep them separate from my Dwarf herd? I have Scottish Highlands on our property...are they a Dexter herd?  No, they are a Highland fold (herd).

Getting back to culling or the euphemism for it, selection, I am doing a lot of it.  I want my herd of VERY short Dwarf Dexters, so I heavily cull or select those that don't meet my criteria to keep my heights down.  Remember I started out with small Dexters to begin with, and don't have to work so hard on height.  My Dwarf Dexters are also MUCH more pronounced than many other Dwarf Dexters that I've seen in other herds.  This is the phenotype we like so much, and I'll agree with you that with some Dwarf Dexters I've seen, I think "what is the point in dealing with Chondrodysplasia if that is the result you get?"   But you haven't seen ours in person of course, your (limited if at all) experience has been with the longer legged Dwarf Dexter, which was probably the result of a Dwarf used to try to reduce the height of a too tall Dexter to begin with.  See, we can agree on something.

My selection (culling) does not have to pass excessively large Dexters on to other Dexter owners, because they are not too large to begin with.  I don't have to hide my heights, or leave the owner with the impression that the Dexter they purchased isn't desirable enough for my own herd.  I don't have to confuse them with a long laundry list of things they need to work on to make it a better Dexter.  After all the hardest of which is height because that yearling Dexter doesn't look so big to the buyer, so they don't think about it at the time.  And on our farm, they are going to be super sensitive about height, because they just walked through our herd of 30 Dwarf Dexters.

If they ask why I sell, it's a simple answer...we have a herd of Dwarf Dexters, and the long leg doesn't fit in with them and we want to limit the number of long legs that we have.  They may want that herd of short Dexters themselves, but they understand that they are rare and highly prized by their owners as a result.  If they want it right away they may pass us over and go find them elsewhere.  Most will get a Dwarf Dexter bull along with some long leg cows to begin their journey of creating their own Dwarf Dexter herd, and most new to the breed will get a Dwarf Dexter bull because they prefer his mature size over the mature long-leg bull in the adjacent pasture.  As they get more experience with cows, their confidence increases from the handling of their Dwarf Dexter bull, and the  intimidation factor of a long legged Dexter bull declines at the same time so they can then make the transition to a short cow herd with a long bull if they choose.  Some never do...they love their full of personality but not scary Dwarf Dexter bull, and many prefer the long legged Dexter cow for ease of milking.

Even though it's easy to do we don't make them fat (except for the steers), and we keep our Dwarf Dexters in a separate group so they don't get beaten up and pushed around by Dexters that have longer legs and are more physically active (remember physical activity burns calories and requires more calories to keep or increase weight).  This helps the Dwarf Dexters avoid injuries a bit better.  If you doubt this, take your Dexters and run them with a herd of Simmental's, and you'll see what I mean.

I am calling them long legs, because that is what they are compared to the Dwarf Dexter.  I don't care how short you get your Dexters, you'll never, even in 30 years, be able to duplicate the results we have now with our Dwarf (short leg) herd of Dexters.  They will always have longer legs, and for me the standard of the breed is the Dwarf, just as it was with the champion Grinstead Herd video that I posted.

As you said in an earlier posting, some breeders are purposefully selecting for larger Dexters.   I suppose that's their choice.  But the largest of all are traditional horned dexters (NOT polled dexters).... here's a traditional horned dexter and his AI Sire was 48" at 4 years.   His sire has been used more times than the 42" Saltaire Platinum. 




The 42" true-short Saltaire Platinum  (50% woodmagic) is NOT a source for taller dexters, but the traditional/horned girls he was used on were the source of those taller genetics.  Traditional/legacy/horned girls often had taller genetics because many chondro breeders used the chondro gene to instantly and artificially (and lazily) bring down the height of dexters instead of working to bring down the true height of dexters via hard work and decades of selection.

In my opinion, too tall bulls should never be collected for AI, and should be marked down for shows.
You might use a too-tall bull for a short time if he has some amazing features, but you'd want to replace him fairly quickly before you lock those too-tall genetics into your herd.

Years ago, the original sire we purchased threw a few taller offspring, but we also got some occasional smaller ones.   Over time, as we've continued to select for more compact sires of our own breeding, we've brought the size of our herd down and we're getting a good number of smaller ones.   I love looking back at any old photos of some of our larger animals and comparing them to some of our shorter animals today to see the tremendous progress we are making in controlling sizes in recent years.




Bottom line is you get what you select for over time.

The chondro gene interferes with that selection process because it masks the true height of half of your herd.

Woodmagic was one of the most successful herds for breeding compact dexters because Woodmagic dumped the chondro gene and focused on breeding for truly compact dexters.

Concerning the ability to create EXTRA-SHORT dexters....  Any bull that doesn't reach 38" by it's third birthday, is questionable because it's below the height standard of 38" to 44" at 3 years of age.   Too Short is just as much of a flaw as too tall.

Perhaps "Dexters" under 38" at 3 years (bulls) should be called something else like "Miglets"  and should be put in their own registry since they don't meet the breed description. 

[lakeportfarms]

You are still conveniently leaving out information, and skewing other information to your favor when you make these posts.
I can pick extremes as well.  I can find the HUGE bull fully from Saltaire Platinum lines and post it next to a small traditional bull and make the same claims as you have regarding the tendency of bulls from certain backgrounds to throw large or small sizes.  Huey is a large bull, and as a show animal he was given the best of care and best of feed.  When you do that, you get larger animals, period.  I'm not saying the bull that is fully pasture raised is deficient in any way, I'm just saying it's different.

Furthermore, there gets to be a point in time that the utility of a cow, bull, or steer is compromised by it's small (miniaturized) stature, and you'll not get sufficient production in order to justify the time spent caring for it, or money you've invested in it, the infrastucture required to manage it, etc...  If you're strictly going for "pet status", great I guess, but the milk/beef part of the equation is the one most breeders will be paying attention to.  And at some point in time your miniaturized Dexter is not going to be very efficient at this.  You've admitted as much with your statement about a bull that is smaller than 38" at 3 years of age, or cows less than 36" at 3 years of age.  Why should they be penalized?  Isn't the breed guideline just an arbitrary range of numbers picked by humans?

My 3 year old 34" dwarf bull is too small then isn't he?  But he will produce larger cows and steers that are not dwarfs.  
Do you think he'll produce a 47" bull at 3 years of age? How large of a bull at three years of age do you think he'd produce?  
How much does my 34" dwarf bull cost to maintain in feed compared to a 42" long legged bull?  
Would you say more, or less?

The same applies for my dwarf cows in their separate herd with the long legged bull.

People come to our farm and they have a choice.  They can pick the dwarf bull and long legged cows, or they can pick the dwarf cows and the long legged bull, or they can pick the long legged cows and the long legged bull (As I've said previously, our long legged Dexters were all within the breed guidelines)  Notice the wording there....they WERE all within the breed guidelines.  Our long legged bull, CJS Timber, is 45" tall.  He is also 7 years old, or more than double the age of the "official" measurement period.  

Is Timber too large to be collected as an AI bull if I chose to do so?  
Should Timber be compared equally to the AI bulls collected at 2-3 years of age?
If we take some of those polled AI bulls collected at 3 years of age 6 years ago, and find they are now 48-50" in height, should further AI sales be banned from them?

I'd appreciate answers to these questions, rather than formulaic statements and photos repeating the same thing as you've said over an over again.  Show a little creativity and out of the box thinking for a change.  We know you can do it.

[Donlin Stud]

Jan 17, 2015 3:16:10 GMT cascade said:

I think that's why some people used the chondro-dwarfing gene to cheat on size.   They could take a nicely conformed large animal, slap a chondro-gene on it and create an instant short little show-winner

And then there are those who wont breed with chondro instead choosing to keep food at a minimum during the development of their calves and/or breed heifers on their first or second heat cycle in an attempt to 'dwarf' the height of their non-chondro Dexters.

To imply that breeders who do breed with the chondro gene are unscrupulous is bordering on defamation.

[cascade]

The American Dexter Breed Description says 3 year old dexter bulls should be no shorter than 38" and no taller than 44" at exactly 3 years of age, and that assumes good care and good nutrition.  Over time, non-chondro breeders can easily select for an entire herd of true-breeding genetics that easily meet that breed description. But it's nearly impossible for chondro-breeders to fully meet that breed description, due to the way the chondro lethal gene works.

On our farm, our goal is an entire herd of true-breeding non-chondro Dexters with 42" bulls and about 40-41" cows (all measured at 3 years). That gives us a little wiggle room to keep every animal within the breed description maximum height at 3 years.

If you were to slap a chondro-gene on 42 inch bulls and subract 6-7 inches due to the chondro effect, then chondro-bulls would be UNDER 38" at three years old and would NOT meet the breed description.

If Chondro-breeders aim for having non-chondro-bulls exactly at the maximum height of 44", then they have no wiggle room and a good number of bulls will go a little over 44" due to natural variation. Also if you slap a chondro gene on a 44" bull and subtract 6-7 inches, then you still have bulls struggling to reach 38" by three years of age and have no wiggle room.

I can't imagine the torture of trying to completely meet the Dexter breed description (38" to 44" bulls at 3 years) with a mixed herd of chondro and non-chondros. It's almost impossible to do.  So Chondro-breeders are forced to ignore the breed description.

If you ignore the breed description, then you might as well just select for large white spotted Holstein looking cattle.


PS. You certainly would want to give your cattle optimum nutrition for optimum health so you can make certain you're selecting for true-breeding genetics (a short little starved and wormy cow might still have large genetics). Using poor nutrition or genetic defects to achieve shortness, is just fooling yourself.


PPS. I like Donlindexters approach of having separate target heights for chondro and non-chondro assuming that in her country, dexters have a breed description that allows for that... but the American Dexter breed description does NOT allow for that.

[jamshundred]

Kirk,

PLEASE ! !   Reduce the size of the pictures.  Remove a couple here and there.   I do not have wi-fi at my house.  Because I am bordered on my highway sides by two creeks no cable suppliers offer service in my area.  I also am surrounded by tall trees and woods which interfere with dish reception.   So, the easiest thing for me is to use my cell phone as a hot spot.  I am not on unlimited data.  Streaming photos from Facebook and here are eating up my data!

Every time I open a thread to read or respond that has all the photos I want to say bad words!

Besides Baby Hugey is big enough without being supersized on DCW!

Judy

[jamshundred]

Kirk,

The Dexter breed was NOT organized with a height standard.   For most of a century there was only a weight standard for cows and bulls.  The height standard is a modern standard. . . and like other decisions made by man for mostly the wrong reasons. . . the height standard is just an arbitrary number they set and goes beyond the original standards of the breed.

I breed chondro Dexters.  I don't have any nightmares at all.  My animals are pretty consistent over the years.

Kirk said:  If you ignore the breed description, then you might as well just select for large white spotted Holstein looking cattle.

Ah, the laughs I get here are so appreciated.  Every smile increases the lifeline.
Kirk, YOU should start looking for large white spotted Holstein cattle.  There is NO mention of polled in the breed standard of the Dexter breed . .  . and. . . if you are NOT breeding with dwarf cattle you DO NOT have animals that conform to the breed standard.  Dished faces and the wide heads that come with dwarf that are part of the description immediately come to mind.  Let me know how those white spotted cattle work out for ya.

Judy

[cascade]

The Dexter Breed Description is very exacting and it's the ONLY thing we have to keep dexters from turning into tiny grey midgets, or huge white spotted cattle. Even the most legacy of Dexters could drift in those directions unless breeders continually select for Dexters that meet the breed description.

"The ideal three year old Dexter bull measures 38 to 44 inches at the shoulder and weighs less than 1000 pounds. The ideal three year old Dexter cow measures between 36 to 42 inches at the shoulder, and weighs less than 750 pounds. Dexters come in Black, Red or Dun. Dexters are horned or polled, with some people preferring to dehorn them." ...... "Fertility is high and calves are dropped in the field without difficulty. They are dual purpose, being raised for both milk and meat."

The breed description definitely says horned and hornless and polled are all ok.

The breed description also talks about animals with short legs and animals with long legs, but EVERY animal breed on the planet has some individuals with short legs and some with long legs, so that's mostly useless information.

The breed description makes no mention of Chondrodysplasia nor Dwarfism nor PHA and certainly doesn't claim that those genetic lethal gene diseases define the breed (but there are articles describing those genetic lethal diseases).

Since only a tiny minority of Dexters are infected with Chrondodysplasia Dwarfism, it can't define the breed. Only 7% of tested dexters carry the Chondro-lethal-gene. Since chondro's can never be more than 50% of anyone's born calves (due to lethality of the gene), and since chondro's live short lives, chondro's can only be about 30% of one's herd (unless you cull the normals).



PS. I'll try to reduce sizes of the pictures that I own, but in many cases, I'm just posting links to photos on the internet, so I don't have the right to alter those photos.

[Deleted]

Judy, if you use firefox you can use an ad on that will allow you to view web pages in text only. You use to be able to change a setting but it looks like in newer versions you now have to use an add on.

[Donlin Stud]

Until there is absolute clarification on what the heights within the breed standard are meant to represent, the height of any Dexter whether under, over or within the so-called height range should never be a consideration of their continuance within a breeding program.

The height within the breed standard goes against the now proven science. The height range CAN NOT represent BOTH longies and shorties because there is not a 20% difference between the max and min figure nor is there a ‘range’ at either of these levels.

Even single height bovine breeds have a range within their breed standard height. Its common sense to have a height range except in the Dexter breed for some reason.
We have a breed which comes in two distinct height ranges – end of story.

Around the world there are breeders who believe the breed standard height is for longies – like us so have a self-determined ‘shortie' height range.

There are those who feel the breed standard height range is for shorties, and then there are those who use the top half of the height range for their longies and the bottom half for their shorties.

Until breed associations around the world truly accept the science and truly understand the breed they are meant to be representing – there will never be a too-tall or a too-short Dexter because height is left way open to interpretation by individual breeders.

This is IMO

[genebo]

It is a mistake to refer to the ADCA and PDCA breed guidelines as a breed standard.

Things like height, weight, any form of conformation, are not asked for or checked at time of registration.

What is today called the ADCA breed guidelines has been extensively revised since I got my first copy of it. Words like "polled" have been recently added without participation from the membership.

You might think that a Dexter that was way outside the guidelines would be refused registration, but you would be wrong. I saw a picture on the ADCA on-line registry just a few years ago of an animal that had more white than black color. It looked like a Holstein. Under pressure of public opinion, the *breeder* withdrew that animal's registration. The association did not bar or restrict the registration.

I suspect that you can register some pretty wild looking pseudo-dexters as long as you don't volunteer any information about what abberations they may hold.

If you are really unscrupulous, you might keep it quiet from the public until there were so many of your abberations that it was "too late to do anything about it".

Sound familiar?