What have I done part II

[lakeportfarms]

Early last spring, I ended up purchasing some nice Dexters out of traditional Dexter lines, except for one, which was sold just prior to us getting there.  We were a bit sad that we didn't get her too, because she was "dun", but we suspected she was red.  But red out of a long line of black cows and bulls.  Well, my wife happened to be scanning Craigslist a couple of days ago, and sent an e mail to somebody who was advertising a registered red cow, and asked for the registration number.  And this is what she found:

www.dextercattle.org/pedigreedb/ponyweb.cgi?horse=030555&HorseName=lady%20II&Page=1&Sort=0

We raced there and bought her.  Our experience with the guy selling her was interesting, but that's a story for a later post.   I remember Ernie saying the guy wasn't worried about registration or anything else, and Sheril and I were kind of sad that such a nice cow would probably be lost from the registry.  After talking to him for a while it's pretty clear he didn't have any idea what he was doing. We'll be able to fix that now, and she's going to be much happier with us, along with her mother and grandmother!

[marion]

Congrats Hans on finding her, and how neat it is to have reunited her with her family ..marion

[wvdexters]

Very Nice.

[Olga]

Omg, Hans, I'm so glad you got her. May be it's the picture, I don't know, but she looks a shortie. And as such, it is a crime for her to be looking so thin! It's on par with having skinny mini-horses!
Just in case you plan on supplementing her during re-feeding, I can highly recommend beet pulp. While it is a carb, it is not a grain and doesn't have the same effects on the gut. It is an easily digestible carb that will help her put weight on quickly without having to feed a huge amount. I recommend soaking before feeding.
I do hope you tell us her full story at a later time. I think it is important to share stories like that, as it might help the rest of us develop a better plan on how to prepare potential buyers for owning a Dexter.

[karenp]

Did she seem to remember her family?

[lakeportfarms]

It's probably the photo...she is almost certainly a non-carrier, but she's a pretty small cow.  More of a dairy type build, and her udder is pretty good, not quite as nice as her mom.  Her teat spacing is off just a little but suspension is good.

The sad part is that she had a calf mid-June that the guy was keeping.  We asked about her, but I suspected that he was going to want way too much money for her.  We have a pretty good idea what he paid for the cow from Ernie because we had purchased the rest of his herd just a few days later.  This guy was asking a pretty good premium over that, and got a calf out of her in the few months he owned her.  I knew he wasn't going to be easy to deal with when we walked to his back yard and he had several pens with about 15 alpacas.  I asked him about them and he started describing how he had gotten into them about the same time, and how the breeders he had purchased his animals from had given him 5 alpacas for free that were worth $10,000.00 each, just so he got off to a good start...lol.

Anyway, I inspected the registration papers he had (Ernie had even had her genotyped) and gave him the cash.   I usually defer to the person who has had familiarity with the cow to determine how to best load, as I did here.  However, after 20 minutes of trying to coax her into the trailer along with some of the stories he was telling about his experiences with trying to milk her and handle her and it was apparent he had no idea how to handle a cow.  He had a small bucket of food that he would hold out, but while he held it out he would bend over and lower his head to her.  Every time he did that, she'd shake her head and paw the ground!  I had the trailer backed up to a gate, and his family was holding a sheet of plywood to cover the other side from the trailer door.  It took 3 of them to do that, so he's trying to coax her into a trailer, through a narrow gate, along a line of people.  Of course her 2-1/2 month old calf is there as well and she's worried about her.

Finally I figured that I had to start to intervene, so the first thing I said was "don't lower your head" to Lady.  I went into the pen with some carrots and fed her some, scratched her neck, and told them to find a way to just prop the wood and back away from the trailer.  After she calmed down a bit and I determined she was actually a pretty nice cow,  I held out the carrots and walked away from her just a little.  She followed me, so I stopped and gave her a couple, and repeated the process a few times.  I tried to get a halter on her, but it wasn't going to be easy because of the horns, so after a while I ended up putting a rope around the base of the horns and trying to lead her to the trailer.  She didn't like it but eventually she went in.

We then told him what he was going to have to do with the calf from a nutrition standpoint since she was being weaned so early, and off we went.  The calf hadn't been dehorned (they didn't want horns), and since Lady II is listed as dun she needed to be color tested for red, and he isn't an ADCA member, and Lady II had never been transferred to him, he didn't breed Lady (Ernie did), and he never owned the bull (we do after purchasing him from Ernie).  When Sheril and I were a few miles away, we talked about calling him again about her, but decided it was going to take him a while to figure out there was a little more to it than he thought.  Sure enough, before we got home (it was a 3 hour drive), he e mailed us and said that he could deliver her to us in a large dog crate in the back of the pickup!  That was a little sooner than we thought!  But he didn't give us a price and I was still thinking it was going to be too high.  We let him wait a bit and then asked him what he wanted...yup, he wanted as much as we had paid for Lady II.   I think he thought that we were suckers or something (see the alpaca reference above).  Previously, we were really low key about what we knew about Dexters, and I didn't even answer his question on "how many do you have"?  So since Lady by that time was safely in her own little pasture at her new home, Sheril wrote and described why we were willing to pay what we did for Lady, what we had, and then described why the calf wasn't worth what he was asking.   I bet by then he felt like he had been suckered!   Anyway, he wrote back and said "I don't mind keeping her".  I expect to see her up for sale on CL very soon.

We're happy to have her, she already enjoys us feeding her some apples and if we go into her little pasture she'll walk up to see us for them.  I think we'll do the beets this year for some of the cows that need some supplementation.  Mostly it's Lady II and her family, who had previously been fed quite a bit of grain as part of their ration.  The process of converting over to grass only is going to take some time, and they are pretty thin in comparison to our other cows.

I have to wonder about the registration of her calf...it seems to me that just about anything goes when it comes to the heifers...here is a guy who isn't a member, who never "officially" owned the cow or the bull, who is now in possession of a calf that he is possibly going to register.  I know the story about this one and it checks out because in March we had spent some time with the prior owner and purchased his other cows, and knew the history here, but how many "Dexters" don't?  Sort of an honor system it seems.  Perhaps the rules for registering a calf in this type of instance need to be tightened up?  What requirements should be in place to register a calf out of a cow you never officially "owned".

Anyway, the differences between how this guy operated and how we do the transaction is like at the opposite end of the spectrum, but he still wanted the premium dollars for what he was selling.  Best that he decided on Alpacas rather than Dexters, I suppose

[lakeportfarms]

Karen,

We haven't introduced her to the rest of the herd yet, she's in her own pasture. It's stressful to bring one cow into a group of 30 anytime, but even more after such a trip and with her calf weaned, etc... Though she was the only cow where we got her from and we know the chain of custody so we're not too worried about disease, we want to make sure she settles in and we worm her and check her out before we slowly introduce her. The next step will probably be to put her on a fence line with the others, then we'll move her in with Mike and his girls, including her mother. I'll bet she'll remember them though.

It's been our experience that keeping her outside of the herd also seems to build a bit of a bond between us and her, since they looks to us for some comfort, I think.

[Olga]

Oh, wow! What a story... As to the reg. question, I think it shouldn't be allowed. And for that matter, I don't think it is, because the reg. paper requires the signatures of the owner at the time of breeding for the cow and the bull. So just because the calf was born on this guy's farm, doesn't mean he gets to register it. When we bought Sioux several years ago, she was in calf. When she had a heifer, I printed a registration form, signed it and sent it to Sioux's previous owner. She then filled in the name of the calf, with her farm's prefix but our suggestion for the name, signed it and sent it off to ADCA.
I wish there was a way to prevent these kinds of situations from happening, but there isn't. It is up to us, the sellers, to reserve the right to be selective when it comes to the kinds of homes we send our animals to.

[rezzfullacres]

Sept 3, 2013 7:46:26 GMT -5 Olga said:

It is up to us, the sellers, to reserve the right to be selective when it comes to the kinds of homes we send our animals to.

I Wish more people would take this to heart. we have declined sales for reasons ranging from, "Dexters don't need grass they can just browse" to the family that wanted a milk cow that they were going to keep in a 1/4 acre lot and they heard that a Dexter would be perfect. there are more but these 2 just stick in my head, The sad part is both of these people did buy Dexters, just not from us.....Congrats on the cow, I hope she works out great for you......

[otf]

And what of the calf, a 2-1/2 month old calf with no mother! Could the calf not have stayed with its mother for 4 more months?

[Olga]

Considering the condition of the cow, Hans has taken the opportunity when he had it. The cow was for sale on Craigslist and would've been sold to anyone willing to pay the money. The circumstances being that with inadequate feed, both mother and calf were in danger of becoming malnourished - but the cow more so, because she'ld keep giving milk until she had no further internal resources to pull from. With proper supplementation, the calf could do fine. Although the "proper" part is doubtful with this owner. I do hope Hans will find the baby on sale before it's too late. Although, from the sound of it, he may have to involve a 3rd party to pretend to buy her...

[lakeportfarms]

Olga is correct...we asked about the calf but he was determined to keep it when we were there.  We made sure to tell him about EVERY thing that was going to be required of him to keep her in decent condition, and we did not mince words either.  We were literally 3 minutes into our drive home when we thought we might call and ask him again if he'd sell her, but decided against it because we figured he had an unrealistic expectation of what her value was, and needed to experience some of the joys of a young weaned calf, trying to get her on a bottle with milk replacer, get her to take some grain (we suggested Calf Manna and he probably choked on the price when he saw it), and then the work involved with dehorning, testing, registration, among other things.  As I said, less than three hours and he called to ask if we wanted her, but the price was still unrealistic, I'd have a $2200 calf by the time I took care of all the things that a seller would normally do, and we kick out 35 Dexters a year ourselves now.  How many more do I need?

The owner knows what we are willing to pay but the clock is ticking.  I don't intend to try to get her back on her mom in a week or two.  It's a bit of a drive as well. Hopefully they'll persist and she'll do okay.  I wish I took some photos of the area they were in, it couldn't have been more than a 100 x 50 size lot, and that was all they had.  No barn...square bales covered by a blue tarp was it for their hay storage.  The Alpacas had a little shelter, with a couple of pieces of 1/2" plywood propped up by 2x4's as overhangs.  Two and three foot snows are not uncommon in the winter.  I hope it isn't one of his $10,000 Alpacas under the thing when it collapses from the snow load!  My guess is the approach of winter might have been the reason they wanted to sell the "big eater".

All credit goes to Sheril for finding her.  I keep threatening to set the router to block Craigslist from her, in this case I'm happy I didn't.