Here we go again! ( Moved discussion)

[jamshundred]

To  clarify your comments on Saltaire Platinum's paper background.   There are known and acknowledged errors in the paperwork. It is my understanding that there have been discussions by leadership in England regarding how to resolve errors that currently exist in this and other entries.   You ask what breeds are in the SP lineage.  Your yourself have acknowledged your belief that Godstone Esmeralda carried genes of a red milking shorthorn.    That is the jeopardy that polled breeders face as more and more line breeding from this one bull increases the opportunity for a genetic defect from three of the four  outcrossings without the crossed breed being identified.  I think another recessive defect may already be cropping up in the polled cattle.  Breeders are having deaths but they are neither being tested, necropsied, or preserved.  I have seen pictures of several strange looking dead calves.  
Some of the breeds that are polled have numerous recessive genetic issues.  If, as some suspect, there was some deliberate outcrossing in the US to help along polled numbers and profit, the descendents of these breedings could be time bombs waiting to go off, combined with the unknown breeds in his pedigree just recorded as "outcrossed" .....it may only be a matter of time.   


Here is the question you never type Kirk that begs an answer.  On your farm, and in a total of about 33% of ALL Registrations recorded by ADCA, descendents of SaltAire Platinum are HORNED.  30% of all bulls being registered are HORNED descending from Saltaire Platinum.  Why are the breeders registering these animals descended from a NON-PUREBRED bull?  If they do not fear horns, than why aren't they breeding traditional bloodlines?  Why are they helping eradicate early American breeding lines with the overuse of a non-purebred bloodline ??  AIs it because they do not realize their were four outcrossings in those lines?  Who is responsible for permitting this lack of knowledge to exist?  Why is a bigger question!

Judy

[cascade]

1. Most ALL registered dexters  have had an inflow of outcross genes somewhere in the past 10 generations.   Even the purest of pure pedigrees almost certainly has some unkown errors due to swapped calves, and bulls jumping fences.

2.  The only way to look for unknown negative recessive genes in an animal or a line of animals is via lots of linebreeding.    Polled animals have had tons of linebreeding to create homozygous polled individuals.   No negative genes have been found, and because of the huge number of breedings, Saltaire Platinum is probably the most proven clean-genetics bull in all of Dexters, with ZERO found negative genes.... If we haven't found them by now, then they don't exist.

3. ALL Dexters have tons of other breeds in their backgrounds. Any dexter that hasn't had a ton of linebreeding around it, could have a negative gene from those other breeds.

4.  Please give us an exact list of the SP outcrossings your far-too-late research has dug up and give us the documented breed name for those outcrossings.   So far, I've not seen ANY record of other off-breeds of cattle in Saltaire Platinum's 5 generation pedigree and the DNA tests verify that.    Saltaire Platinum is the ONLY Dexter bull that has been DNA tested to show no other breed genetics in his makeup. 


  

[bruff64]

"Please give us an exact list of the SP outcrossing" - Who is us? No need to continue this discussion. I believe everyone here knows what the Legacy Breeders objective is. Breed as you like, respect others goals that are different than yours.

[lakeportfarms]

May 18, 2016 6:20:41 GMT cascade said:

1. Most ALL registered dexters  have had an inflow of outcross genes somewhere in the past 10 generations.   Even the purest of pure pedigrees almost certainly has some unkown errors due to swapped calves, and bulls jumping fences.
 

However this was not possible for Platinum, or any of the many polled ancestors of Platinum, either by unintentional, or even intentional means, right? After all, the Davis test shows Platinum as pure.  LOL!  And certainly your herd, with the many intact bulls as you've previously stated here (I believe you've said you don't steer any of your bulls), never have any fence jumpers either.  That just happens to other people.

[cascade]

First you have to understand what the term "Purebred" means, and how you create "Purebred" animals.

Purebred Registered Dexters started out as not dexters at all.  They just rounded up a bunch of crossbred cows and bulls that were short in stature to start the breed in the late 1800's.   You create a purebred breed by creating a breed description, and then following that breed description as you make your selection decisions generation after generation as you create animals that breed true for traits described in that standard breed description. 

Purebreeding is a process by which you are attempting to create animals that breed true to the breed description.  A purebred Dexter should be able to have calves that meet the breed description nearly 100% of the time. When you buy a purebred dexter, you should assume it will breed true for its key breed traits. 

Without parentage testing, one would have to assume that a good number of breeding errors occurred in the past, but expert breeders can tell you that an occasional accidental outcross does not harm a breed, as long as breeders continue to select for the breed description and follow a purebreeding process.

Each generation, 50% (on average) of an ancestor's genes are lost so those occasional accidental outcrosses get washed out within 4-5 generations.  But via selection you can speed up that loss process by selecting toward dexter traits and selecting away from non-dexter traits.   

Every Dexter likely has some pedigree errors in the past, but those errors don't matter much as long as we continue to select for key dexter traits.   Parentage testing will help reduce/eliminate outcrossing errors.   But accurate pedigrees alone are NOT a guarantee of "Purebreeding".   An animal with a perfect pedigree, that doesn't meet the breed description or that throws calves that don't meet the breed description isn't really purebred, regardless of the pedigree.  



 

[lonecowhand]

Here's another, preferred way to go...

Find a group of lovely small horned cattle that have been providing beef , milk, and draught on meager and minimal circumstances, for say a hundred years or more.

Select the ones which best suit your purposes, and please the eye, and who's temperament is appealling, write a description of these remarkable creatures and keep them as intact as possible for the next hundred years or so, not letting them cross with other breeds.

This has been the preferred method for a couple of centuries, no need to change now.

[cascade]

The old story of Dexters is mostly myth, based on the story of Kerry-cross cattle. It was Kerry cattle that provided the meat and milk and draft in parts of southern Ireland (Dexters didn't yet exist as a breed).

Like most cattle, Kerry came in a range of sizes. A word for "small" in Ireland, was "Dexter".... So Dexter-Kerry simply meant Small-Kerry. But the Dexter-Kerry (smaller Kerry) were not a separate breed, they were just a size variation within the Kerry breed.... so Dexters didn't exist as a breed until someone came along and invented the separate breed by rounding up the smaller Kerry and isolating them in their own separate registry with their own invented breed description, and started to call them just plain Dexters, instead of Dexter-Kerry.

The newly INVENTED dexter breed mostly were bred by rich people on their rich estates, but thankfully those new Dexters carried hardy genetics from their humble Kerry and Kerry-mix roots.

[bruff64]

"Newly INVENTED"

Kind of like the polled Dexter?

[jamshundred]

Rewriting history again?

it is obvious you have not read the historical information published on both the Kerry and Dexter cattle in the first herd book of the Royal Dublin Society.  I will publish the entire section today.  Professor Low wrote of many breeds in the 1840's that he witnessed first hand.  His recorded experience and knowledge are in contrast to your modern updating of history.  I doubt most modern Dexter owners realize that the Royal Dublin Society was a group of scientific researchers whose interests covered the animal and plant worlds and regularly published the  research articles.

judy

[jamshundred]

Rewriting history again?

it is obvious you have not read the historical information published on both the Kerry and Dexter cattle in the first herd book of the Royal Dublin Society.  I will publish the entire section today.  Professor Low wrote of many breeds in the 1840's that he witnessed first hand.  His recorded experience and knowledge are in contrast to your modern updating of history.  I doubt most modern Dexter owners realize that the Royal Dublin Society was a group of scientific researchers whose interests covered the animal and plant worlds and regularly published the  research articles.

judy

[lakeportfarms]

Here's how I view the situation as it currently stands...The polled Dexter is the choice of people who do not want horns. Period. It's the #1 reason they choose that over horned Dexters, they do not want to de-horn. However, there is a problem, in that a heterozygous polled can produce horns, or produce a calf that once again has the potential to produce horns. So as long as there are heterozygous polled animals out there there is a chance for horns. Thus, there is a movement toward homozygous polled. You already see it with bulls. The heterozygous polled bulls go wanting in favor of the homozygous polled bulls. It won't be long and the same thing is going to happen with heifers and cows. If you have heterozygous polled, you're going to be facing the "obsolescence" of your bull and then cow. It won't be much different than the horned breeders faced when polled became popular with so many new to the breed, except now there isn't anything unique about your heterozygous polled bull or cow!

Once again single trait selection starts to kick in. Poor conformation...but it's homozygous polled! Poor temperament...but it's homozygous polled! They are financially more valuable to the breeder to sell as a breeder rather than as beef. All of the polled breeders who paid big money for their heterozygous polled Dexters now find that they are passed over in favor of homozygous polled, because the #1 criteria of most of those buyers is the polled status. It is not uncommon now to hear breeders say, "This bull/heifer has ALL THE RIGHT results" (i.e. homozygous polled, A2/A2, red, non-chondro, etc...) No mention of conformation and temperament.

With all of this, the Dexter is physically changing for the worse...they are looking not like a Dexter, but like an Angus. Long skinny faces on the cows, mean looking furrowed brow faces with small eyes on the bulls, more of a beef look than dual purpose look. Not physically very appealing to those of us who want the broad muzzle and kind face and large eyed, dual purpose phenotype of the Dexter as it has existed for more than 100 years. You better believe I tell prospective buyers about all of this, and after I point it out and show them some examples most see it for themselves...and they appreciate the guidance that they received, because it helped to prevent them from making a mistake that they would have a hard time working away from if they found out the truth.  If they don't want horns for whatever reason, in order to get those attributes they accept that they will have to de-horn their calves.

The current slogan of the ADCA is "Celebrate the Diversity of Dexter Cattle".  Thank you for making this the slogan, because I use it to my advantage with those new to the breed.  Be careful with what you purchase, because it may end up being something that doesn't resemble what you've read about the Dexter.  Most of those buyers come back to us after looking at other farms (that raise polled) because they like what we have to offer more.

Perhaps one of the reasons that we get so much push back from breeders like Kirk, is that he knows that there is a difference, but he was one of those sucked in by the rhetoric about polled. Sure, he's trying to breed the narrow muzzle, large size, etc.. out of his herd, but it is a very slow process and he'll never fully realize the goal, because the pressure will be on him to breed homozygous polled and all the other "right" statistics.  Too many different competing interests.  I can select for those other traits that make a Dexter unique, because horn status is a given; they are always born with horns. I can select for the broad muzzle, I can select for the large kind eye, which are the subtle things that those of us with Traditional Dexters appreciate about them. Buyers of the Traditional Dexter are not as concerned with the "right" statistics. We embrace chondrodysplasia, we are not as concerned about A2, we look at the physical conformation of the Dexter and sell to those who appreciate those traits as well as the historical nature of the breed.

If I wanted Angus like traits, I would not have sold our two Lowlines that we started our journey with cattle with over 10 years ago. However when we needed a bull to breed them, we didn't want an Angus bull. Sheril found Mike and Cedar for sale, and we decided on Dexters as the breed we would raise. Not because of the name, but because of the physical characteristics.

Which face is more attractive(and distinctive):

This one?

dextercattle.org/bulletin/Bulletin%2027%20-%20Summer%202014-final.pdf

Or this one?

[rilie]

Kirk,

I'm an historian by training and I like to read! Your statements go against everything I've read about the history of the Dexter AND the official breed histories of every Dexter Society (ADCA and the DCS specifically) can you cite any sources the contradict or refute Professor Low's observations from 1845?

This was copied from Dexter Cattle Society's website today;
The frequently heard theory that the Dexters are a comparatively new breed is a complete fallacy as the breed is fully described and mentioned by its proper name, in a report on Irish cattle written in 1845, by Mr David Low.

Low was very clear in describing the Dexter as separate and apart from the Kerry. Low also tells us the cow was used by poor small-holders living in poor hilly/mountainous lands. The Dexter's roots are not with the wealthy.

*Below is speculation based on my current reading*
I'd also argue, at this point, that wealthy owners weren't the ones outcrossing, they only cared about good looking small cows. Admitted outcrossing seems to have been done for two reasons for commercial reasons (beef/dairy) and genetic disorder reasons.

Commercial breeders were trying to combine the good traits of the Dexter with those of other breeds, as is done today. This is generally not a problem unless these animals are falsely/mistakenly brought into registries as purebred.

As Beryl Rutherford bemoans in her book, many well-meaning but misguided breeders were trying to beat the bulldog gene by outcrossing and then bringing their animals back into the registries will false parentage records.

So, if you could supply some references to support your claims about the Dexter history I'd appreciate it. I know history can appear malleable and I always keep an open mind but your statement pretty much fly in the face of the only early written account we have.

Tyson

[lonecowhand]

Some go by the adage, "If you repeat something long enough, it becomes the truth."

It's a problem in media, politics and, apparently, in small cows.

It's actually easier just to stick to the truth, instead of making stuff up. You will gain credibility.

So, some truth to counter the B.S.: The Irish word "dexter" means "on the right". The real Gaelic words for small are "beag", "beag bideach", and " Og".

But I think you missed my point, which was that you don't need to "Make" a Dexter, they've been there all along. People cherish them for their useful traits, and have for hundreds of years. Their rich history is part of the allure of the breed.

[cascade]

Professor Low simply repeated the myth about a mythical person who supposedly developed a Dexter breed, but then he went on to say that that there was no record of the breed development and that the myth was disputed by folks of the day. 

Here are Professor Low's exact words:

"This gentleman is said to have produced his curious breed by selection from the best of the mountain cattle of the district. He communicated to it a remarkable roundness of form and shortness of legs.  The steps, however, by which this improvement was effected, have not been sufficiently recorded; and some doubt may exist whether the original was the pure Kerry, or some other breed proper to the central parts of Ireland now unknown, or whether some foreign blood. as the Dutch, was not mixed with the native race."

Further, Professor Low didn't even mention horns at all.  So clearly, horns weren't an important breed defining trait.

Here's a Dexter from the New Legacy club's website (where is the remarkable round form and shorter legs?)



I fail to see how she meets Professor Low's description, or the 1900 Breed Description. 

[cascade]

Most red polled dexters descend from this "Legacy" dehorned cow and many look very much like her.  Her teats aren't perfect, but she's a pretty good cow. 

[bruff64]

It's easy to look at historical texts and make assumptions. I have been to Ireland and will be back in Killarney of County Kerry again next week. Looking at the ruins about the country side and thinking about conditions relative to 100 plus years ago the Dexter or Kerry keeper could have given a hoot about this discussion. I highly doubt that the polled version would have counted for much and even some of the traditional a that lean heavier to the beef side. These cows were kept primarily for dairy purposes, beef not being storable in the mild climate of Ireland. Just look at the udders on the Dexters in early pictures. If you get a chance to go over make a point to look in the old thatched barns and particularly the size of the stalls. You would be tight with a Kerry in them much less a modern dairy breed. The lots for and average family would not support a cow much bigger than a Dexter. Early writings about Kerry's wander all over the place relative to size and weight descriptions leading to suspicions that Dexters and Kerry's were one and the same. Dairy traits were a priority not beef. Dairy products fed the family over a longer portion of the year as well as other animals on the land. With grain growing a limited prospect dairy was your protein source supporting hogs, chickens, etc. Beef is king in our modern times and it shows in today's Dexters, especially the upgrades. Kurt is on a different path than the rest of us. Don't forget the dairy roots in the Traditionals.

[Deleted]

Larry, could you give us more insight perhaps on different thread that is not so tainted on the Legacy Dexter Cattle Breeders board. What was done with the beef at that time in Ireland for preserving it. Was it mostly jerkey? Was it more of a community thing where when an animal was butchered it was shared and used right away? I find that in all animals when they are breed for meat production quality goes down. Even in my chickens Dominique they are slow to grow and not as much meat but a year old rooster sure taste good but you are not going to cut it with a spoon. Perhaps this is why Dexter is so good because the meat production was largely ignored until recently.

[jamshundred]

I think the division of classes ate quite differently, but I do not think either ate their cows.  They milked them.  But they must have eaten their bulls....but it is rarely portrayed in books or shows of the time.  The peasant class mostly ate bread and stews of turnips and perhaps onions and drank home brew.  I do not recall ever seeing a movie or reading in a book much about drinking water.  Usually ale is memtioned as the drink of choice.  And milk I suppose, but refrigeration was mostly non existent for the average home.  The peasants were permitted to grow small gardens of grain amd root vegetables around their homes, but you rarely hear of them having anything other than chickens.  They lived on the estates of the gentry but they were not permitted to hunt the wild game for food nor were the livestock shared for food.   I think some of means kept pigs or sheep.  

[bruff64]

Recent article in the Irish Times:

Ancient Irish ate very little beef or fish despite abundance of both
People ate tonnes of butter, cheese, curds and whey and an awful lot of bread and porridge
Mon, May 11, 2015, 01:00
Alison Healy

Study author Dr Liam Downey: “Ireland was covered with cattle from time immemorial. In fact, cows were the currency.”


There was an “extraordinarily high” number of cattle here from earliest times and an abundance of fish in the waters, yet Irish people ate very little beef or fish, a new paper has found.
UCD honorary professor of archaeology Liam Downey and environmental archaeologist Dr Ingelise Stuijts collated and analysed a body of research that looked at food consumed from the time of the earliest documentary sources up to the late 17th century.
Dr Downey, a former Teagasc director, said some of the findings were surprising. “Ireland was covered with cattle from time immemorial. In fact, cows were the currency,” he said. “Therefore, isn’t it very surprising that the ordinary people were not eating much beef? Now the wealthier classes undoubtedly were eating beef but not the ordinary people.”
Research had found that people lived primarily on dairy products and cereal products. “They ate tonnes of butter, cheese, curds and whey and when it came to cereal products they ate an awful lot of bread and porridge.”
Dr Downey and Dr Stuijts quoted findings from AT Lucas, former director of the National Museum, who published a paper on historical food products in the 1960s. Lucas said beef was most commonly consumed “by the higher ranks of society”; mutton was “only a casual item in the menu”; and pork and bacon were by far the most important kind of flesh eaten in ancient, medieval and later times.

Near-obsession
Dr Downey said the “preoccupation, if not near-obsession”, with dairy cows highlighted the importance of milk and dairy products. Milk tended to be sour when consumed, and bonnyclabber, or thick milk, was extensively referred to in the 1600s and 1700s. The Vision of MacConglinne, a tale full of food references, which is thought to have been written in the 12th century, described a “yellow blubbing milk, the swallowing of which needs chewing”.

Dr Downey said it appeared that when beef was eaten, it was eaten because cattle had to be slaughtered from late autumn because of a lack of winter fodder. This meat had to be distributed and eaten before it went off, so “communal feasting in early Irish society was organised around the livestock production system and in particular the seasonal slaughtering pattern of cattle”.
Dr Downey said the low level of fish consumption in ancient times was even more surprising. “The rivers, lakes and seas abounded with fish and in general we used very little fish.”

Pilchard fishery
Research on the types of fish found in the 12th century, mainly in rivers and lakes around Leinster, found plentiful stores of salmon, trout, muddy eels and shad, an oily fish.

Ireland had a thriving pilchard fishery in the 1600s and 1700s and the small oily fish was exported in sizable quantities. They were processed in adjoining buildings known as fish palaces. Pilchards were salted in one building and crushed under weights to extract the oil in the next “palace”.
The papers on historical food products and the history of fisheries are published respectively in the latest editions of the Journal of Irish Archaeology and the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Journal.

[bruff64]

Ireland’s Ancient Dairy Past Revealed
by Colm on January 16, 2015 in Archaeology blogs, News
14485101548_61c6f87704_z

New research from the University of Bristol has revealed the antiquity of dairy farming in Ireland. Research published today in the Journal of Environmental Archaeology shows that dairying on the island goes back approximately 6,000 years, revealed through traces of ancient dairy fats found in pots dating to around 4,000 to 2,500 BC.

Dr Jessica Smyth of Bristol’s School of Chemistry analysed nearly 500 pots from the Neolithic, the period when people switched from hunting and gathering to farming. In Britain and Ireland, this change occurred around 4,000 BC, more than 1,000 years later than on the Continent. The Bristol team use a combination of fat or lipid ‘fingerprinting’ and compound-specific carbon isotope techniques to identify the origin of fats preserved in the walls of prehistoric cooking pots.

Dr Smyth, who led the study, said: “We know from previous research that dairying was an important part of many early farming economies, but what was a big surprise was the prevalence of dairy residues in Irish pots. It looks to have been a very important food source.”

Ninety per cent of the residues tested for fat origin were found to be dairy fats, with ten per cent found to be meat fats (beef or mutton) or a mixture of milk and meat. Dr Smyth added: “People can obviously cook meat in other ways than boiling it in pots, and there is plenty of evidence for cereal processing at this time, but the Irish dairy signal remains very striking, particularly when you compare it with the continental European data sets. We really do seem to go mad for milk in the Neolithic.”

Milk is still a traditional and valuable food in Europe today, produced by over 30 million dairy cows and representing 14 per cent of the value of European agricultural production [2011 figures]. Six thousand years ago, dairying in Ireland looked very different.

Dr Smyth said: “We know that settlements were small in the Irish Neolithic, usually one or two houses, so it’s likely that early farming groups had just one or two animals supporting the household with their products, which were perhaps part of a wider community herd.”

Such results are even more significant given the fact that domesticated animals such as cattle, sheep and goats had to be physically shipped to Ireland as part of the process, as these animals were not native to the island. “These are a very determined group of pioneer farmers. They are setting up everything from scratch, and taking a significant gamble with their livelihoods and those of their dependants,” Dr Smyth said.


It would appear that the Irish love of dairy products is very ancient, and the suitability of the island for dairy farming was recognised early in prehistory.

Source: University of Bristol

[bruff64]

Good link on the subject:

www.penn.museum/documents/publications/expedition/PDFs/28-2/Dairying.pdf

[lakeportfarms]

Thank you for all that background Larry. I suspect that they also were very selective about the bulls that they used, and that bull was probably shared between several herds over the period of a year. There would be little benefit to a defined calving season, in fact probably preferable to have cows freshening throughout the year. It wouldn't surprise me if that bull bred several generations as well, especially if the bull was a nice one.

[cascade]

Kerry were a dual purpose breed. Boys were raised for beef. Girls were for milk and then beef at the end of their milking days.

When a separate Dexter breed was invented, short and stocky and beefy animals were selected to form the new isolated breed. This would make Dexters dual purpose, but leaning toward beef with ideal beef frames.

[bruff64]

Then Jersey would be dual purpose as well

[bruff64]

I would think that the Dexter breed would be considered a breed that evolved more so than invented. At least the original Dexter. I will grant you that Cascade Farms polled Dexters would be considered invented.

[teatpuller11]

Lets not fight. It isn't doing the cattle any good at all.  Instead of guessing, why not ask?

Has anyone asked the English association whether dun was registered as red or was culled, before Mrs. Rutherford?

Has anyone asked the English association how longleg Dexters made out in the show ring, and if there's a date connected to their acceptance ? 

Wouldn't it be interesting to see just how many early owners were living in poverty and how many had money?  Mrs. Sponaugle, I think you mentioned you have a copy of the first Irish Herd Book.  Would you list the names of the first owners for us?   Are they crofters or well-off? 

Love my Dexters.

[cascade]

May 20, 2016 15:16:37 GMT bruff64 said:

I would think that the Dexter breed would be considered a breed that evolved more so than invented. At least the original Dexter.  

Breeds require some degree of isolation to become a true breed. There are two ways to get that isolation:

1. Natural barriers (waterways, mountain ranges, great distances) can provide rather natural isolation.

2. Fences, and breeder management, and registries, can provide invented isolation.

Kerry Cattle were somewhat isolated in their region of Ireland and they somewhat "evolved" along with the local people to fit the niche of the the local environment and local farms. There were a range of sizes in Kerry cattle including more regular sized cattle and smaller sized cattle (and everything inbetween) and they all freely intermixed within the Kerry breed with no isolation from each other.   The word "dexter" simply meant small or short, so a dexter Kerry, was a small Kerry.

In the late 1800's, Some rather well off individuals decided to invent a new breed of smaller cattle, so they rounded up a bunch of small-looking cattle that would have mostly been smaller Kerry cattle, but also Kerry crosses and even likely a few small non-Kerry cattle.  They created a breed description and started a separate registry for those small cattle that eventually got a name-change from "Dexter-Kerry" to just plain "Dexter".    Those original foundation animals would have had both chondro individuals, and true-short (non-chondro) individuals among them.

Dexters are a breed that was invented mostly by rather rich people in the late 1800's and early 1900's, using hardy smaller Kerry-Cross stock (and a few other breeds) as foundation stock.    The early breed descriptions clearly tell us that they intended their newly invented Dexter breed to be True-Shorts with 100% of animals being short and stocky.  None of the early descriptions describe the chondro mix of  tall cattle, short cattle, and dead cattle.

 

[jamshundred]

DO call me Judy.  

The RDS herdbook 1 is a available  for all to peruse on Google books as are all the volumes except the last 2 or 3 before DCS in England became the registry.  Just search under "Kerry Cattle Herd Book" as the breeds were combined.  

It appears to me the earliest herd books show a few people who saw the appeal of Dexter cattle to the wealthy classes who were involved with exhibiting their livestock, and like the polled fad today,  exploited it.  There were a few who supplied the many.   A browse through the historical herdbooks Legacy has added online (the only site online where the late 1800 and early 1900 entries have been compiled), will show the same seller(owner) names of foundation cattle over and over, with the Dexters being sold to owners of the ruling class and their connections.  That was true of the early imports to America.  They were held by the wealthy.  it was not until the production sale held by the Peerless herd after the war that folks with less wealth but still in the upper class began to own Dexters, and probably was well into the 1970's before regular folks began to be able to purchase a cow for their farm.

judy

[teatpuller11]

thank you, Judy.

But, how can Dexters be the smallholders cow if they were owned by the rich and famous?

[jamshundred]

I didn't write the history.  I just read it.  Have you asked that question of the historical groups who have promoted that belief?  The earliest historical references DO say they were cattle held by the smallholders, and in a sense, one can say they were tended by the working class since I have not found references of the Duchess of Devonshire or His Majesty the King out in the stanchions milking their Dexters.  It is likely they were just what they were portrayed to be. . . . . . . and then someone recognized opportunity with the wealthy classes whose women  were attracted to the little dwarf cattle,( much as I was),  and gathered that phenotype far and wide and began a breed.  Mr. Robertson and his sons must certainly have been blessed with the opportunity.

This is a question for those with a historical background in society itself to answer.  The people of Ireland and England lived within a class system foreign to me.  I grew up in an America where education and hard work provided unlimited opportunity.   My bit of knowledge of Irish and English history tells me it was not that simple to overcome the restrictions of class in those countries.  Perhaps that is why so many fled to America over the course of history.  

Judy