If you had to pick livestock to raise, very small scale

I like sheep, who cares if they are aloof?? Are you trying to make friends or eat them? My sheep mind their own affairs and I mind mine, and thats the way we likes it!

First of all, ignore Pancho, he just loves to argue

Second, Dexters are NOT "miniature" cattle. They are a naturally small breed of cattle. They are the size they are because of where they evolved and the conditions there, not because someone bred them to be miniature.

For someone with small acreage they are a very good homestead type cow. They're also very good for someone who doesn't want gallons and gallons of milk per day and/or someone who isn't able to use the amount of meat on a large sized cow quickly enough. They aren't just a fad. They fit the homestead niche very well. If you're raising cattle for money like we are, no, they don't fit - unless you like to market to individuals. But for a family who just needs a little milk or wants pasture raised meat and has small acreage there's no better animal. They're hardy and do very well just on pasture and they tend to have very long productive lives, many of the cows produce calves into their 20's. They're the easiest of all the animals suggested so far to fence in. They are excellent mothers and extremely protective of their calves.

Full sized or "real" cattle as Pancho likes to say just aren't a good fit for the situation the op describes. What are two people going to do with gallons of milk every day (if they decided to milk) and a full sized beef carcass every year? Plus they don't have the pasture to feed full sized cows. They do have plenty of pasture for a Dexter cow and 2 growing calves. So what is the better advice for op as far as cows go?

I'd like to say this again - Dexters are not miniature cattle. That term has a horrible connotation with the rip off people who are out there breeding miniaturized cattle and selling them to uninformed people for a fortune. It's totally unfair to hang that label on them.

Btw op, you can leave the calf on the cow and milk when you need house milk if you decided to also use the cow for milk. You don't have to be tied to a milking schedule if you just need a little milk here and there. Most people who do that will lock the calf up at night and milk in the morning then turn the calf back out. You can do it every day or once a month, doesn't matter.

I chose dexters because when I want to butcher, I only have to deal with a 1000 pound animal instead of a 2000 pound one. And no, it's not the same thing if you just butchered a younger steer because the bone to meat ratio is much better on a mature 1000 pound Dexter than it is on a 1000 pound half grown steer. The dexters are very easy on the pasture too. Much, much easier than sheep. Sheep will graze down to the point of killing the grass and cattle won't. Cattle are easier to protect from predators too and also easier to fence in.

Speaking of butchering, we gave a Dexter to family for meat last year. It took 2 adults and 2 teenagers only 2-3 hours to kill and process the cow into manageable chunks of meat. They then took the meat home and aged it in a spare fridge. Try that with a full sized cow!

Very interesting. A good dozen posts recommending Dexters in this thread with no mention of chondro or PHA. Then Pancho dropped a...um....tootsie roll in the punchbowl and brought up the genetic defects. But no, wait, it's not really a defect, it's actally a sign of superior production. Don't that beat all.

Somebody needs to say it - If you breed the wrong two Dexters together, you have either a 25% or 50% chance (sorry, senior moment) of getting a mutated, dead calf. That is worth mentioning, doncha think?

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That's really not a big deal. Dexters are tested for those things these days. It's easy to avoid problems, just buy cows who test negative. Or if you have a positive cow just always breed it to a neg. bull. If the op had expressed interest in Dexters someone would've explained the process of buying one and what's involved, it's not a secret

Actually if you checked my original response I specifically recommended a chondro carrier cow for the O.P., with the qualification that it could be bred to a non-carrier bull via A.I.
Again, as a couple posters have just mentioned, if you look at the O.P.'s first post you would see that there was limited pasture, and they were considering what to put on it. A Dexter cow would fit the circumstances.

Furthermore, I'd rather have a 6-700 lb. cow on limited pasture than a 1400 lb. cow following rains or spring thaws.

As Cliff said, any reputable Dexter breeder will educate a buyer about the genetics of PHA or Chondrodysplasia, as would any of the posters here that are familiar with the genetics. Just breed two non-carriers together or breed carrier to non-carrier and you get a 50% chance of a carrier calf. With PHA the calves should be terminal unless you plan to test them ($25). Chondrodysplasia carriers do finish out faster than non-carriers by about 4-6 months. Breeding two Chondrodysplasia animals together results in a 25% chance of a bulldog calf, aborted typically at about 5-6 months of gestation.

I liked your whole post, but there were parts of it I liked more than others.

Once again, your opinion. I have had my Dexters for almost 4 years now. No calving problems or health problems at all. Wonderful mothers. They feed each others calves all the time & I know I could put an orphan calf on them & they would take it. Protective of their calves, but do not care if I mess with them. I would much rather have the smaller size to work with. We have probably 2.5 acres fenced in & have no problem with them overgrazing if we rotate. I fed hay all summer this year because of the drought, but then so did my brother that raises full size cows. He just had to feed a lot more of it than I did.

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I can't believe I deleted it!

People USE llamas and donkeys, but reality is they are NOT good "guard animals" and will often kill goats and sheep

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I think getting into Livestock guardians is taking it a tad too far away from low maintenance.

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I had been thinking of going with a standard calf in late winter and butchering out before the next winter. My plan is to feed just excess goat milk and pasture to cut costs. I still think that's a good deal; really, no additional "cost".

Thanks for the info on bone-meat ratios.

yes, that is a good deal. Even the bone to meat ratio will be higher, the lower cost of buying the animal will offset that loss. Some breeds of cattle do much better on pasture alone than others. Some breeds will require graining to gain weight well. Dexters just happen to be excellent at feed conversion and do fine on pasture and hay (when pasture is unavailable). I am graining right now to tame mine down. The heifer calf was over a year old when I got her and never been handled but I can pet her how while she is eating. As soon as I can get her tame enough to get a halter on her, the halter breaking will start.

yeah it really isn't worth mentioning because it's not really a big deal. The testing for these animals is usually done by the breeder while they are doing DNA for parantage (for registration) and even if it's not, testing is cheap and easy.......it's done using a small bundle of tail hairs with roots. You can usually tell by looking at them if they are chondro carriers or not. The shorter legged ones are usually positive and the longer ones are usually not. And pha is really very rare and shows up only in certain bloodlines so it's not a problem either. My heifer is chondro positive. I wanted a chondro heifer because they are shorter and much cuter (in my opinion). So I told my breeder I wanted a chondro heifer and a non chondro bull. No problem at all!

My llama is an excellent guard for the goats. I have seen her in action. I know other people that have had the same results.

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I can't believe I deleted it!

A friend of mine had a whole herd of llamas.
The neighbor's dogs got in and killed many of them.

a llama might make a good guardian if it was just one smaller sized dog that it was up against, but a couple of medium sized dogs could easily take down a full grown llama. Some donkeys make good guardians but a whole lot of them don't. Many have been known to attack and kill new additions to the flock, either grown ones or new babies.

Pancho is right IF you're looking to produce for the mainstream commercial market. if i were looking to produce for that market i'd keep black baldie cows and registered angus bulls. the calves/steers could go through the auction as grade angus and all the values that adds for the specialty angus market. if the market shifts back to the hereford type i could replace the angus bulls w/ hereford/simmenthal bulls & still get the premium price.
BUT
if i were producing just for me & mine AND planning to sustain us during a SHTF scenario, i want to have as much meat on the hoof as possible because preservation could be extremely difficult. that means smaller animals in greater numbers. the massive heavy beef animals are a product of meat industry, not of the small farmer feeding themselves. likewise for swine, sheep & meat goats. native animals in subsistance cultures are smaller than commercial/industrial breeds. the exception is small stock like rabbit & poultry, their size is dependant entirely on the preference of the owner, bigger family, biggere animals.

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