Halter sizes for Dexters?

[darbyfamily]

I really don't care for the cow halters with the dangling chain on them. Seems the chain scares them a little when they go to eat and that ring bangs on the side of the feed trough...

so I am wondering, what size and type halters do you use with your Dexters?

We have four Dexters coming home to us on Saturday. One is almost 3 yrs old so I got her the 'small' horse halter (I like that they are adjustable at the nose and neck) and for the three yearling heifers we got weanling horse halters which is a step below small but not as small as foal.

I don't know if they'll fit, I save the tags and receipts, so if they don't I can go back to Orshelns and trade them for a size that works.

What do you use?

[cddexter]

I don't like the chains either. The ring can get caught on wire ends, or branch stubs, and the animal is stranded there.

Instead I use regular cow halters (criss-cross strap with a ring where the straps pass each other under the chin). If too long, you can put extra holes in the headstrap. You can get them in various sizes. I found that the large size works on bulls, med works on cows and small does it for yearlings. For calves, I make my own out of binder twine, using the four-strand round braid technique, but doubling up on the strands, so there are eight pieces of rope, two to each 'strand' to make the ahlter thicker and thus less prone to cut. However, I ended up not leaving halters on them at all (after all, we're not talking horses here), and make my own rope halters with a lead all-in-one. They are easy, and take about 14 feet of 1/2 nylon rope.

If I wanted to catch a cow in the field, I put a little grain in the bottom of a bucket, set the halter on the grain, so it's sized right and ready to go (nose loop wide open around perimeter of bucket with the headstall part hanging out over the edge of the top). Cow puts nose in bucket, I whip headstall over ears--remember the cow's eyes are down in the bucket and she can't see me well--she pulls head out, I grab lead part and pull a bit, and voila! one haltered cow. Then I let her go back and finish the grain as that's the part she'll remember next time. Worked a charm.

Maybe this subterfuge will work for you, too. c.

[ctownson]

95% of the time we just use the poly/nylon halters for cows. You can buy them from Valleyvet or Jeffers very economically. They adjust to fit all sizes of cows with no problem - we use them from calves to full grown.

charles
www.beavertreefarm.com

[wileycoyote1]

Do the Dexter halters for sale on the Dexter page "Merchandise for Sale" have chains?
Anyone here use them? Are they sized pretty well? We've been thinking about getting the ones for the Dexters... are they different from regular ones?

[wdd]

Yes, they have chains. We bought our first Dexters from Thomas' so we got some with those that were purchased and ordered some larger halters later after my gals out grew the original ones (we bought them as weanlings).

[copperhead]

Yep, I like the adjustable ones, they work well on a weanling or mature cow, but I don't like them for teaching how to stand tied. They always tighten down on their nose. For babies, I use a goat halter, it works really well on the first haltering.
P.J.