Checking up on some living history

[genebo]

I had a half hour without a job today, so I used it to look up and call Ken Rust.

Most of you don't know who he is. He is the Dexter owner who started the Dakodan Dexter cattle board back around 2004. His son, Corey, ran the board for him, although Corey had no interest in cattle.

That board became a wonderful repository of advice and lore about Dexter cattle. Almost everybody who was anybody participated.

Need some advice? It gushed forth. Need some technical know-how? it abounded. The library grew and grew, with big names contributing.

The board maintained a nice, even temperament. Similar to our cattle. If a harsh word was heard, it was moderated before it got out of hand.

This worked at least in part because we also had the dextercattle2 board. The original moderators of DC2 disappeared and no one came forward to replace them. Dextercattle2 was where we went to argue, fuss and generally have at it.

Meanwhile, back on Dakodan, all was peaceful. Corey ran the board with an iron hand.

It couldn't last forever. As Ken told me today, the troublemakers found the board and began slipping bad stuff in. Corey tired of dealing with the squabbles, so he yanked the plug.

There were millions of words of great advice stored within the board's drives. All gone. Vanished like light before dark. Never to be recovered.

I felt like I'd been robbed. I may not have contributed a lot, but I recognized the value of what others had contributed. The Dakodan board was on its way to being a small version of Wikipedia for Dexters. We didn't get a warning, either. You went to read the day's correspondence and there was none there.

I asked Ken if any backups had been retained and he answered no. It was a bright spot while it lasted, but once soiled, it was over.

Some of us who were on the Dakodan board talked about starting a new version and rebuilding the knowledge base. One day, Olga announced that she had done it! An exact replacement was coming on-line. I was one of the first to join. Some of the most knowledgeable of the Dakodan participants refused, saying it would be a waste of time to go through it all again, just to have the same thing happen. So we began building anew. Without the wise old heads the same things kept being repeated over and over. It became a one-party system and you either joined up or got out.

It wasn't the same without Ken, for his joking manner, and some of the wise old heads that would never be heard again. A lot of effort went into re-creating the Dakodan board, but it never quite got to be the same. Some of the same troublemakers that had plagued the Dakodan transferred over. Some of the old heads that had signed up for the new board left, harrassed away.

Those who can remember it will find this painfully hard to remember. Dakodan was such a pleasant way to spend an evening with friends of similar persuasion. I doubt that it will ever be matched.

This is the closest that anyone has come to duplicating the pleasantness of the Dakodan board. Yet it has already been compromised.

Maybe we can learn from the past. Set up a new board for arguments or resurrect dextercattle2 for that purpose. Remind everyone that starts an argument to "Take it to DC2".

Ken still has Dexter cattle, although he quit registering them. He doesn't even know how many he has. He took some advice that he could keep 1 Dexter for every 1 acre. He has 10 acres, so he bought 10 cows and a bull. It didn't take long for him to see that it wouldn't work. He thought to sell 5 of the cows, but had a friend with lots of land who offered to take them and keep them for him.

That's a deal that is hard to turn down, so he took his cows to his friend's place. Before long, they had raised a crop of youngsters and it was slaughter time. Both families got their freezers filled and had some left to sell.

After a while it got to be a problem having more than one bull in with the cows, so he brought the bulls back home. Now he raises the males while his friend raises the females. They just keep expanding the herd of females while slaughtering all the males except for the breeding bull, which goes to the cow farm at breeding time.

How would you like to own so many Dexters that you didn't even know how many you had? How would you like to have access to so much pasture that you didn't have to worry about feeding your herd?

Every night it could be, "What's for dinner?" The answer would be, "Dexter beef!"

[Blessings Farms]

Great story Gene. You do cause me to have more questions than answers.
This could get long guys but be pat. I did not decide on Dexters until
the day my good friend and I arrived at the breeder I found on Craigs list.
This breeder at one time had over 40 Dexters on his farm and at this point
he had six. He had them in a paddock behind the barn that was used for the
cows when he had milked them. As soon as he opened that door He could have
sold them all to me because we saw what I had wanted not what I had seen at
a show a year before. The breeder is what many would call old school in hind
sight he does register but only with P C D A , does not test due to what he
called politics , and believes in a hand shake and a persons word.
As a totally new breeder to Dexters I will need the valuable info. that is
contained in the minds of your friend and the like. I will start this now and
be back latter feel free to join in.
1 Can this forum be separated into a controlled area for Traditional and
Legacy breeders, A public area, and a modern area ?
2 One of my greatest concerns even with my small endevor is there anyone
involved under the age of 40. Think about that. What happens in 20 years?
This Legacy needs to continue and the original Ginstesd video thread could
be detrimental to that effort.

[lakeportfarms]

Nice story Gene. I think it was inevitable as the polled started to become so prevalent, the chondro test became available, and you have some newer breeders who's first exposure was not to the "traditional" or dwarf type Dexter, so they have any understanding of what it originally was. In my opinion, the breed (actually the owners) will be forever fractured in their opinions.

The best approach is to continue to get the photos and videos that exist of the breed from years ago out there for others to see. Since Shaun Lord had decided to disperse her herd, hopefully that will get some people who heretofore had problems finding nice traditional Dexters acquainted with them once again. I was worried that she may end up selling some to some owners who would put them with homozygous polled bulls to introduce more "Dexter" traits into the resulting progeny, but she assured me she was doing the best she could to vet the buyers.

Blessings Farms, your story about where you got your Dexters is more common than you think. The bull we purchased last summer came from a farm very similar, though he had started out in the ADCA and no longer registers his Dexters. He hated the politics, and the direction the breed had been taking, especially in the past 6-8 years. His herd made a pretty big impression on us, because on the drive home I was telling Sheril that it was exactly as I pictured ours should be (except I'll register and genotype) though reluctantly with the ADCA. We were already on that path, but seeing it in practice confirmed we were on the right track. We could do it now if we prematurely sold or culled off a number of our non-carriers, but many of them have been around the farm for a while but still healthy and we couldn't think of doing that yet, so it will be a gradual transition.

[otf]

Too many people, for whatever reason, are not registering their cattle. I tell people straight off that they are not doing right by the breed if they don't register their animals and they should look elsewhere or buy a different breed. I spend too much time and too much money making sure what I sell is fully registered, tested, vaccinated, wormed, and transferred to let them go to someone who won't continue that. Their full health records are part of the sales contract, along with notes on what that specific animal has eaten, been treated with, etc. It's all there for a conscientious owner to refer to. Unfortunately, once an animal leaves your farm, you lose control over what happens. Genetics are being lost and/or diluted, and this is a shame. As near as I can tell, it was about the time of the association split that people started getting dishonest, stopped registering, began cross-breeding and other such nonsense.

Gale

[lakeportfarms]

Gale,

Yes, I'm sure the split was responsible for many of the issues as well. And with the momentum of a lot of breeders to polled, I think there was way too much incentive to skirt the lax rules to finally (in their mind) make some money off of the trend. Which has led to a lot of crossbreeding and then sold as registered. That has been the gripe of a few people I've spoken with. They just don't believe the papers have a lot of value anymore, and they breed to the phenotype (horned, dwarf, being the most prominent). I agree it would be better to register them, and I refer them to Legacy at least. In my opinion, the ADCA leadership(I don't have any experience with the PDCA), has put it's eggs in the polled basket with the assumption that that is where the growth is, to the detriment of the members who prefer the traditional horned (and dwarf) Dexter.

I'll have over 60 Dexter calves this year, many of them dwarfs. I'm not sure how many of these I'll register with the ADCA, including the heifers. However, I will register and test with Legacy. A few years back, I started to register the steers, just for a calving record of the cows, and then they raised the fee to $15. It was a stretch to do it at $10. At $15, they must think that paper certificate for the steer that they mail to me is as delicious as a pound of Dexter rib eye!

In the recent Dexter bulletin, there was a message from the Region 3 director, talking about breeding "death dealing defects" like chondro out of the breed. We have a herd of 40 plus carriers, with many more on the way. I wrote a letter to the ADCA President, and never received a response. However, I notice the website for the ADCA has a very BLACK background now, rather than the initial pleasing background of the line art drawing with a horned Dexter cow and bull (who was clearly a carrier). I pointed the drawing out on Olga's board last year in one of the scuffles with Kirk about chondro and how it was a part of the definition of the breed, and it wasn't more than a month or two later that the background had changed. Obviously I should have kept my mouth shut, because somebody must have seen the post and complained, they never would have thought about it otherwise. The drawing is nowhere to be found on the site anymore.

[genebo]

I wrote to the ADCA Board and my Regional Director about delaying publication of the Sheppy article until he has a chance to revise it, as he is doing for the DCS. I didn't get a single reply. After two weeks, I re-sent my message, prefaced with the complaint that I had not gotten a single reply or acknowledgement.

Within a short time I got a phone call from my Regional Director. We had a lengthy conversation. At the end, he agreed to bring the matter to the Board's attention and make direct contact with Andrew Sheppy.

Soon after, I got an email from the ADCA President, telling me that the officers and Board are taking my message very seriously and have contacted Mr. Sheppy.

Evidently it was the second message that spurred them to action.

My Daddy used to say that sometimes you have to use the choke. Those of you who have been driving for a long enough know what that means.

[genebo]

The dextercattle2 board is still there and available for use. It would be a great place to use as an arguing spot.

Whenever you want to call someone out over a disagreement, ask them to meet you at groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/dextercattle2/conversations/messages

It has a search feature that lets you search older topics all the way back to 2002. If you want to see how long Kirk has been doing what he does, look back in the DC2 records.

[Blessings Farms]

You are correct Gale a breed like Dexter should be documented.
I personally know of three groups of Dexters with in 90 mile of
me that are horned typical cattle like Hans and I described. Two
of these herds have not been registered since being put together
7 years plus ago. I did not purchase any from those because of
that fact. The larger herd 40 + is used in program called Eat
Ohio and specializes in organic products, meat, cheese, ect.
and was purchase from the west. The smaller herd was purchased
from Ohio and Virginia. I wills say I was tempted but without
updated pedigree how could you tell what you were purchasing?