Distinguishing Fads from Long Term Trends

[jlmissouri]

All other things being equal in the current market it looks like the most valuable Dexter is a Polled Red A2A2 animal. How long is that going to be the case? A2 might become more or less important if the science is ever decided on that point. How about red? I would think red wasn’t the preferred color back in the day or most Dexters would be red by now. Polled for me is decided as I like my cattle without horns, but I see a chance of horned animals being more valuable years down the road when they are rarer than their polled brethren.

I am building a herd of 50 cow calf paris and I have decided to use polled red bulls to move in that direction. I will not cull a good animal in my herd if it isn’t red or polled which is actually the majority of my herd. I would also use a black polled bull if I ran across a great specimen. With the limited testing I have done ¾ of my registered herd is A2/A2. All the cattle I have tested have at least one A2 gene.

A couple decades from now what would you see as the in demand Dexter? Just a FYI I am not trying to start a fight between polled and horned, red or black. This is as much personal taste as anything and everyone is entitled to there opinion. In short raise what you like, just curious what most Dexter breeders see as the most valuable animals. Would really like comments by anyone who has been raising Dexters for a long time, and what if any previous fads there were?

I have also posted this on the Facebook Dexter Enthusiast group as well.

[legendrockranch]

My response was posted on facebook.

[littlecowfl]

A lot of us seek out gentle cattle with nice conformation. Color and horned/polled is not as important.

[cddexter]

Hi JL:

I can only speak to the last 35 years, and Dexters have been around a lot longer than that.

I think it's fair to say the first 'fad' was size. That's what got Dexters started as 'Dexters' in the first place. From old pictures, just about anything small got included in the breed. There are old photos of some really nice quality dwarf cattle, and even more photos of pretty ugly dwarf cattle with bad feet, poor udder attachment, and lots of white.

Even into the 1940's size was the criteria. Check out the photos the Moore's provided Ensminger as examples of Dexters for his Beef Cattle Science compendium. In the US, conformation wasn't high on the list.

By the early 1980's, color started to be of interest. A Canadian, Doris Crowe, imported some Woodmagic which included duns. She paid for Beryl Rutherford to come from England and look at US herds. American breeders had been registering non-black animals as red all along, and were surprised/dismayed to hear Beryl tell them that most of their 'reds' were actually dun. Lots of resistance. One Director said, "Well they look red to me!" and refused to change her registrations. Not too helpful.

With Beryl's comment, suddenly red became hot. You could only find one or two in the whole country that were actually red. Sandy Thomas got a red heifer, and started breeding for red, promoting them as 'true red'. She got huge prices. Another Canadian, Cathy Lovejoy, imported a red bull from England, to cash in on the trend. This was Lucifer of Knotting. Knotting was the high profile show winning herd at the time, with impressive milk records. Lucifer brought good udders and heavy carcasses with the red.

At the time, semen was $15/straw. Lucifer was $35-50/straw. One owner who came later decided it mattered if the animal had a paper pedigree back to day 1 with only foundation animals in it, and since Lucifer's showed one outcross 10 generations back, he wasn't a 'real' Dexter. Strident, lacking in science, this breeder used !!!! and ***** and ALL CAPITALS to claim Lucifer was a mongrel mutt, and his genetics were destroying the breed in general, and American Dexters in particular.

At the same time, dun took a hit, because some claimed if it wasn't red it wasn't a real Dexter color as original standards specified red or black. Another Director said, "People can't tell them apart and the dictionary says dun is a shade of red, so let's call them red/dun." Now didn't that add to the confusion. One new breeder went around trying to corner the market on red, and ended up with a whole herd of duns!

Because there were some height, weight and temperament concerns with Lucifer, I decided to offer an alternative red source, and brought in Cornahir Outlaw from an old line kept as a closed herd in Ireland.

As DNA testing gained in knowledge, the color locus was found for cattle, and I did a color study. Lucifer was 'e' or recessive red, Outlaw was E+ or wild red. Both came with a variety of shades and modifiers. Thus, we got black noses, pink noses, salt and pepper noses, mealy noses, dark red on the face and legs, carrot red, Irish setter red, all the tones in between, and very pale cream tail hairs.

Just like Angus, a lot of people liked red and bred for it.

Fred Chesterley (Llanfair) got tired of dehorning and didn't like the vet fees and pain, so decided to import polled semen from England. He figured if he felt that way, there would be others. Enter Saltaire Platinum.

The anti-Lucifer breeder switched horses, and went after Platinum. Lots of fanfare, lots of vitriol, every fault known to man was attributed to Platinum. However, Fred was right: lots of interest in polled. Suddenly polled became popular for the very reasons Fred had envisioned, but with not a lot of animals on the ground, prices rose: market demand. New fad.

Dr. Julie Cavanagh in AU found the locus for the dwarf gene, so now people could test rather than guess by phenotype. Some breeders had been working on small non-dwarfs, and these became (well not exactly hot, but certainly warm) desirable. Same person who trashed Lucifer was back: breeding away from dwarfism was destroying the breed, how did we know we weren't losing other traits as well if we didn't keep chondro. (Julie found no connection, just a missing phrase in one gene string that controlled longbone growth.) Not a fad, but certainly a direction.

Then A1/A2 proteins were discovered. This became the new fad. Suddenly, testing became important and people, even if they never intended to milk, would only buy A2/A2 cattle. Prices rose again for A2, and if you had A1/A1, the market just wasn't there. Another fad.

That's how we got the red, polled, A2, rush.

Meanwhile, another new fad was foundation-only descended Dexters were rare and special. (Well, with the improved quality brought about by breeders paying attention to traits other than size and color, there weren't a lot of the old animals still around.)

Next one will probably be some kind of tenderness gene, or height gene, or...

All just my take, of course.

Cheers, c.

[cddexter]

Oh, and while we're at it, I'm told Jeff Chambers et al have commented on Facebook on the marketing ploy of 'proportionate' and 'medium leg'.

35 years ago, we had True Type, Beef Type, and Shortleg as definitions of what a real Dexter was. They were all the preferred type, and all were dwarfs of various quality, but all had very SHORT cannon bones.

The other half of the breed that had to be tolerated to get the shorts were disparagingly called Kerry Type, Dairy Type, and Longleg, the latter suggesting a giraffe-style (and oops, they often were very tall with shallow bodies).

I get to take the blame for Proportionate, as I coined it mid-80's. Trying to find attractive terms that were not misleading nor derogatory, I picked PARK Dexters for the dwarf (because it was the very rich who had them roaming around their estates, which were called parks and I thought the term added a certain cashet). I couldn't figure out a suitable small word to describe the non-dwarfs to replace the derogatory terms in use, and since the dwarfs were largely DIS proportionate, I settled on proportionate. It didn't take two months for some of the dwarf breeders to apply the term to the better looking dwarfs, so that one was a wash.

Beryl Rutherford got tired of having her non-dwarf small Woodmagics described as 'longleg' so she coined the term 'medium leg' to describe an animal that was not tall, had shorter cannon bones but not because of dwarfism. Same thing: it didn't take long for the dwarf crowd to glomp onto the term to describe the better looking dwarfs, so not only was that a wash, but it created a third class of Dexter, even more confusing.

Both proportionate and medium leg were to distinguish smaller animals that did not rely on dwarfism for size reduction, but in both cases, the dwarf owners immediately saw the advantages and borrowed them for their own use.

cheers, c.

[thegoodag]

I'll go with the tenderness genetics, if this can be done it will be the next fad. I have a tiny beef operation and pick up steers now and then to supplement supply and have seen some animals that were not so good. I did not have any good information on the genetics as I just wanted some extra beef but I can see this being more important in my selection process in future. I've upgraded pasture / supplemental hay quality and noticed an improvement there but the next step will be genetics.

[cddexter]

Nothing more fun than a bit of woo-woo. Sounds crazy, but you could try any or a combination of the following:

1. ear texture.
The idea is the tenderness of the animal is consistent through the whole animal, so.... if the ear is soft and flexible, the whole animal will be tender (guess that makes my lab/shepherd dog very tender), and so on down to rigid, which would be tough. The scale is compared to lettuce: leaf, romaine, and iceberg. You get the idea.

2. ear shape.
the longer and narrower, the more tender. Short, round ears are less tender. Try telling this to the Galloway breeders.

3. lower jawbone shape (this also relates to rib shape)
measured roughly just behind the outside edge of the mouth, run your finger over the jawbone at right angles to the jawbone. Concave bone produces a more tender animal than convex. Same test on the back ribs about one foot below the spine, concave more tender than convex.

Enjoy.

Cheers, c.

PS there are already tests for tenderness. I think Patti uses some. Just to keep things in perspective, Belgian Blue were found to have a gene that made extreme tenderness. The Angus breeders, who have the market pretty much cornered anyway, don't have the gene in their cattle. I was told it took about a month for the BB gene to be labeled 'the mushy gene' by the Angus promoters to discredit the BB's. haha.

[kansasdexters]

We do test for tenderness and marbling genetics (Igenity Beef Profile). Yes, we believe it is worth the $40 to know the genetics of each herd sire prospect and replacement cow when building a registered Dexter herd. If registered Dexter cattle breeding stock is to be of value and desired functionality in the future, then there must be breeders/owners that are paying attention to the unique functional traits and desirable qualities of the Dexter breed. This is not a fad, this is a commitment to future owners and breeders of registered Dexter cattle. There is little value in scrub cattle or poorly bred cattle or cattle that do not possess the necessary functional traits associated with the Dexter breed for the next generation of Dexter owner/breeders. Forget the fads, do what is right for the Dexter breed to continue for another 100+ years in the future.

[Pinevalleydexters]

I have been hearing in our ADCA Region 12 district that Dunn is the new trend. I don't think that is a fad. Anyone else hearing this?

[cddexter]

Just to keep things straight: it's DUN not Dunn. Rosemary Fleharty misspelled it for years, no reason for you to copy her. c.

[jlmissouri]

Thanks for the insight cddexter, I am curious how long have you been breeding Dexter's, seems from your posts you have had them for awhile?