Was told I'll go broke with dexters...
 

Now, I am very new to cattle. My first two calves ever were just born last month and I am still waiting for one more cow to calve. And thats the extent of my 'cattle operation'. I went with dexters because I am small, my land is small and I am planning on staying small. Plus I just like dexters.

I met a lady last week when I was selling her adult daughter some rabbits. She said DONT EVER buy dexters! You will go broke when you try to sell them. No one wants them. Now, this was the first I heard of that. I have been calling around trying to get a few more weaned heifers this fall and everyone is sold out and some people even have a 3 year waiting list. The prices on them keep going up and up. Used to be able to get a registered bull calf for $350, now they are $800-$1000.

This lady told me that she lost a PILE of money on them when she sold them. She said she sold her bred heifers for $250 each!! I was shocked....how come she had to sell them for so cheap? Asked a few more questions and she took them in to a regular bred heifer sale! Like with big cows! Now please correct me if I am wrong, but isnt it a terribly foolish to take dexters into a regular cattle auction? People are there to buy big cows,...buyers have a set idea in mind of what they are getting and they sure aint gonna come home with something miniature. And dexter buyers wouldnt be there. It would never occur to me to go into a bred heifer sale and try and get some dexters. I know feedlots dont want dexter steers because they wouldnt grow uniform with the rest of the cattle. Slaughter plants would be unsure of how old they actually were etc... they could be mistaken for a stunted ill angus.

Now correct me if I am wrong, but I am sure I was told that if you get into dexters you must sell them private. You cant run them into sales with commercial cattle. I mean you can, but you arent going to get anything for them.

I feel bad this woman is running around telling people NOT to buy dexters when she should have known better than to run them through a sale. In my opinion anyway.

I made a web site for our farm with some photos of our little herd.

There is no mention of animals for sale (yet) but I got at least a dozen inquiries this spring from folks looking for Dexter's.

I heard from one of the local dairy farmers that they sent a Jersey bull calf to auction, it did not sell and it cost them to ship it both ways!

Are both of the calves heifers? If you get a bull calf that is when it get's interesting.

I like having the Dexter's and it would be a great thing for them to 'pay their own way' but as far as 'making money', well that seems a bit optimistic with just a few animals.

The auction barn would be an absolute last resort.

Good luck with your Dexter's!:clap::clap:

Jackie, there is a market for dexters, it is a different market than most cattle producers and buyer are in. The dexter market is a small specialty segment. Where as the larger breeds are more of a "accepted" breed for the commercial market..

Only the most mainstream breeds are gonna be profitable when one's marketing program consists of "run 'em thru the sale barn".

I think registered Dexters from a good lineage are very sought after. I have unregistered Dexters because the lady I bought the original two cows from did not keep up their registration. (I know what a mistake, but I love my cows.) When these cows are bred to an easy calving black angus bull, they go along right with our other feeder calves. These calves grow well and sell well. I try to AI my cows to a good Dexter bull, and if they stick I hope for a heifer. If they don't stick, the next heat we use our Angus "easy calver". And no he is not a huge bull, so please don't tell me I am being cruel to my girls.LOL

you can make money with any breed and you can lose money with any breed. as long as you have a market for your animals that you do not saturate you can do ok. I think dexters might be in the hobby farmer growth pase--like lamas were years ago, for a long while lamas were very pricey and once the market got saturated with a lot of lama ranchers the market fell out and you can not give them away nowadays. I think the alpacas are in the middle part of that phase now but they at least have a fur market. don't get to big to quick and get some repeat customers for meat and you can do ok.

I married into a family that raises Angus and Angus/Hereford cross cattle. The sale barn is where we sell our yearlings and culls. Sale barn buyers are typically looking for uniformity and volume.

When I decided that I wanted a dairy animal, I chose Dexters. I do not enjoy working with the large cattle, and we are not set up to handle sheep or goats. It never crossed my mind to try to find one at the sale barn, and that is the last place I'd try to sell the calves. Now, I am no cattle expert, but it didn't take me much research to learn that if I wanted Dexters, I would need to find a private seller who was willing to part with them, and that when it's time to sell, I will need to find a buyer who really wants my animals. They are a niche market, and selling at auction doesn't fit that niche.

One is a heifer and her name is Clair, the other one is a bull soon to be 'steered' and his name is Mr. Delicious. I have people already trying very hard to buy Clair off me but she isnt for sale. I would like to someday have about 15-20 momma cows, but I will go slow and make sure I can sell what I have before I go crazy. right now I have enough family and friends wanting beef I wont have to advertise a steer for sale for a long long time. There is a butcher not too far from here, less than 10 miles and his prices are good. I have a friend that sells lambs, you pick live and you pick them up cut and wrapped from the butcher. She has no problem selling them. I am hoping for the same luck with steers.

Sort of, but people generally dont eat llamas but they do eat dexters. About half the dexters being produced are being eaten. And people are never going to stop eating beef. I do think that many people are going to see the advantage of smaller cattle vrs larger cattle. Well I believe there is an advantage anyway. They arent crazy price. i find them to be priced at the same per pound as big cattle. You pay about half as much for a dexter as a large cow. And when big steers are priced at $1.10 a pound dexter steers are also priced at $1.10 a pound. This just being based on online ads I have found. I actually paid $400 each for the two of mine that currently have calves, but they are half jersey. I have been offered $1500 for the one cow (she had been hand milked before I got her), but I am not selling!

In the US, the Dexter market varies depending on what part of the country you live in, but most people don't take Dexters to the sale barn. It's not easy to sell cattle privately, it can be a lot of work, but that comes with a heritage breed that is registered. And now Dexters require a fair bit of testing. I've also found that it's much easier to sell steers than bulls.

If you get involved with the Canadian registry, perhaps that can lead you to marketing contacts, regional meetings, etc., and provide you with more secure outlets for your calves. I'm not familiar with Canada's Dexter groups.

jackie---I know its kind of apples to oranges but my point was that the market for dexters could get saturated to the point that you can only get rid of them at the sale barn and all the other posters have already spoken about what a beating they will get there. my advice to the op was just take it slow and not out grow their market.

With the draught covering most of the USA and hay selling in the $70 a bale near me...Dexters would be hard to sell except at a sale barn

Actually, the opposite is true. With feed costing so much, people are looking for "economy" cows, that eat less. I've sold every one I had available and had more than one person looking at every one of them.

It's no longer feasible to keep a 4-gallon-a-day cow and feed the excess milk to the chickens. If you only need 1 or 2 gallons, why pay for 4? What I mean is why pay for the feed it takes to produce 4 gallons?

Dexters propensity for browsing means that they are happy eating a wider range of foodstuff than some other breeds.

Think of the example of the Tamworth pig vs the Yorkshire pig. A Yorkshire has been bred to fatten quickly in a feed lot, eating corn based feeds. A tamworth fattens slowly on native vegetation. You can turn a Tamworth loose in your scrub pastures and harvest him in the fall. A Yorkshire might starve if you tried that with him.

Consider that a Dexter is more like the Tamworth than most breeds. Mine eat trees and bushes and grass and hay and stay sleek through it all.

The point is that you'll have to buy far less expensive feed to raise a Dexter.

For most of us, the option of selling the calf or eating it is a win-win situation, too. The beef is excellent, so if you can't get the price you want .....

let me make it a little clearer ANY CATTLE BREED with the draught going on will be hard to sell except at the sale barn

Thank goodness we arent all having a drought. Everything is perfectly normal where I live. I personally havent heard of any of Canada currently experiencing a drought but I could be wrong. Crops look good where I live and hay prices should be normal. We seem to be getting a few more major storms than normal and I think we have a record year for tornados in Saskatchewan, although I havent seen one yet. Boo. :(

Wow good for you!

Our pastures are still green but our spring has all but dried up with only about 6 inches of water in there as opposed to the normal 3 feet.

This is going to get interesting to say the least....

Let's see - how much water do eight Dexter's drink in a day.....

Oh yeah, and the spring supplies the house too.

I want some dexter's but I want them for personal use, not to sell. I think it is a very niche market and would be hard to re-sell though if grass fed you could sell the meat in a grass fed beef market, I have heard the marbling in there meat is nice. I don't mind paying the $700 price but I would only keep a few cows for milk and kill bulls (after breeding or while still young) for their meat. I would not expect to grow rich from them


On another note anyone know what the feed cost would be monthly for a dexter

Dexters don't need bagged feed if that's what you mean. They stay fat and healthy on pasture and hay.

If you have enough grass, you can feed them for free.

My neighbor has a lot of excellent pasture that he manages well and he never feeds them anything.

A friend in Arizona keeps hers in a small pen and feeds them store-bought food.

Ask the two of them how much it costs to feed a Dexter and you'll get the two extremes.

Even the 100% grass fed Dexters still cost something. Minerals and labor and fence repairs and fuel for the tractor and lumber for a shelter and the list goes on.

In spite of that, my friend makes a profit by selling his 100% grass fed Dexter beef direct to consumers for a lot more than you can get for a prime steer at the livestock auction.

I find that if I want my Dexters to raise a calf as well as furnish milk for the house, that I need to grain them. If my cows are just raising a calf, they do well on grass.

You can go broke with any breed.

Do your best with what you have.

You can't expect to sell them at the livestock auction .you have to advertize and sell them to a small specalty market .the same goes for selling a home milkcow its 1500.$ to a homesteader or .38 c apound as a butchet - hamburger cow

Thank you. Ya the whole point of my post was just asking if it was foolish to sell dexters at a livestock auction, then run around and tell people they arent worth anything. I am not worried about ME making money. I just found it odd that she was so sure dexters were worthless.

We are just lucky. Our house is in town and we are on town water. I dont even know where it comes from...the ground I guess. No rivers around here.

We have 2 dugouts on our land and they are both around 25-30 feet deep. This summer they went down by about 2 feet...but still more than enough water for the animals. Even in a really really dry year their should still be water in them.

And I only have 11 adult animals and 2 calves on 160 acres of grass. They eat it long after the snow flies.

I really do not think it works that way...you need to step back and take another look at it if believe that

On the Candian prairies I was told to figure that it will take 6 large round bales to feed the average cow. I figure since dexters are half as big, it should take 3 round bales per cow per winter. Last year I figured 3 bales per cow and 4 bales per horse. I ended up with 2 extra bales in the spring so it was a pretty good guess. I could have easily bought more if I needed it but I didnt.

A bale costs $40 delivered. I have been paying the same price for years, but if it goes up a bit I am not going to panic. I dont have that many animals.

So in figuring that, it costs me $120 a year to feed a dexter. I dont feed them anything else besides hay in the winter.

Jackie how big it the dexter calf feeding only hay in the winter at a year old

I dont know. These are my first calves and they are just babies. I will have to see how big they are next year. I have no way to feed grain without feeding grain to everyone including a bunch of horses and donkeys so to prevent fights I am just not going to do it. Plus the lady I bought my dexters from sells hers a a premium price and she said she doesnt feed any grain. She says they finish on nothing but grass. True or false, I dont know, but I think its cheaper/safer/better to just feed hay and grass. Have to see.

And no, before anyone gets all bent out of shape, I wouldnt leave an animal suffer. I would feed grain if I noticed them dropping weight in the winter. I have done it with a horse before that came here from Southern California. Without some high performance horse feed and a blanket she would have died.

I paid a premium price (1200) for a Belmont Dexter heifer because she had a great temperament, had lots of ground work and wasn't gonna cost me as much to feed, and I think she's still worth every penny I paid over the price of the 400$ holsteins that crop up on craigslist in terms of hay consumption and attitude. She's 4.5 mos pregnant now and keeping her condition on a flake and a half of rich alfalfa and light browsing a day.

My girl learns quickly and lets me do anything to her-- great qualities in both a milk cow and a breeder. It will be tempting to keep her heifer calf, but I bet I can trade one weaned for a near finished steer in this market.

I've had several visitors that have asked me to call them if I ever sell her. Including my dairy vet. His entire life is cows and he adored her.

I don't have enough time or imagination to make up stuff.

Rock Hall Raven and Moses of Dog Run were Dexters who belonged to a man who was sent to prison for life. He left his 40 acre farm and the two Dexters behind. It took 5 years before his affairs could be straightened out and the farm was sold.

Lo and behold, Moses and Raven were still there, so were two other bulls and two heifers, born during his absence. I found them just as the new owner took possession. They looked good, except that Raven had broken off one of her horns. Good body condition on all of them, though.

I tried to buy these Dexters that had lived for free on that land all that time, but he took them to the livestock auction instead.

He intended to sell them for enough money to buy a few Angus feeder calves. It didn't happen. He didn't get enough for these valuable old Legacy Dexters to buy even one Angus calf. He lost. I lost. Everybody that values the heritage breed lost.

Don't take your Dexters to auction if you want a fair price. The buyers there have a pre-determined idea of what they want, and your little Dexters aren't it.

To add further to what genebo says, Dexter steers are usually in good demand as more and more people want to 'control' what goes into the beef that will feed their families. And usually, if you sell keep a half and sell the other, what you get for the other half more than pays for the processing costs.

genebo so your way of feed them for free does not count




cost of land

taxes on land

any up keep to land before they were left those two years as in limed or fertilized

fences

water supply even if it was a pond somebody had to dig that pond that cost money

the amount of money if he did not have the cows and they RENTED the land out

No, it only counts if all that stuff is there and going to waste. Putting a couple of Dexters there to eat the grass and forbs that would otherwise go to waste is better than free.

Lots of farmers have done it for years, using the breeds of hogs that prosper on the variety of an unmanaged field. Dexters are like that, They love to eat things some other cattle won't.

wow, that would seem odd, seems like drought would make them more popular with hay and grass in short supply...but then again, maybe they cost as much to process and the bigguns do:) and that makes it not worth it...

we are talking a draught with nothing in the fields THAT HAVE NOT BEEN GRAZED the side of the roads are burned up also..... why would you buy anything now just so you could feed it $70 bales of hay..most 200 head herds are now 50 head and feed hay every day and they started feeding hay a month ago...most only got half as many bales from the same field a lot got 1 /4 a friend got 48 bales on 50 acres last year same field got 220


BTW I never heard of a cattle farmer with more than 30 head of Dexter's....that would be selling 10 head of dexters to the public each year....with 10 cows and 10 small calves as they do take awhile to get to there 500 lbs

If you are into cattle as a hobby why even consider whether they will be profitable or not. Remember it is a hobby and few hobbies make money. People are into hobbies for enjoyment and if that is the case just budget for the hobby and enjoy the venture. If you are into cattle for profit then you have a task ahead. Tackle the tasks as you would any business. No matter what business you undertake you must have a customer. What your customer wants is what you need to deliver. The customer could care less if you are profitable. In agriculture the market sets the price. That is a fact and an individual is not going to change it. The for profit producer has to learn how to survive financially under these circumstances. The hobby person doesn't and should not fret. I have a few laying hens. I do not like store sourced eggs. Do I make a profit from the eggs. Of course not! I could have bought thousands of dozens of store eggs for what my chicken house costs. Each breakfast is just a reminder of how much I appreciate having naturally produced eggs from hens that lay near perfect eggs with yokes that are not anemic appearing. Some things do not have to return a monetary profit!

Agmantoo, you said it so much better than I could have. Thank you.

Ya my cows definitely fall under the hobby category. I have had 2 of them for 3 years and I still dont have any calves from them...but they are gonna stay cause I like them. I dont mind having big dumb pets. I dont make 5 cents off the useless crippled/blind horses walking around. But I feel better about myself knowing the horses are safe with me and nothing is going to happen to them. I spent $65,000 on some land that was originally just for my useless horses. I sold my house and paid cash for the land...but whatever. I own some land now that is worth way more than $65,000 already. Probably the most profitable hobby I have is rabbits. One rabbit can make me $600 per summer. I made $300 just last week selling rabbits. Would I do it if I just broke even? Yes. I LOVE rabbits!

Most of the people who choose the mini cows are considered hobby people.
They can sell them to other hobby breeders but can't depend on that only.
Like any hobby, there will be times when you can sell all you have, if you don't have many, and sometimes when you can't give them away.
When you are in a business you can't count on the hobbist to keep you in business.

Hope you track down that lady and explain to her what she did wrong and tell her never to take Dexters to the auction...etc. She may take it the wrong way though. *shrugs*