02/27/13, 04:39 AM
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Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Michigan
Posts: 316
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We are...that said, the investment to get in is pretty high, but the ongoing costs are lower than more common breeds. We raise registered animals, and always have a ready customer base both for any heifers we do not retain ourselves, for the occasional bull, and for both live steers and finished beef. Not to mention the occasional heifer that is destined to produce delicious A2/A2 milk for their owner.
If you have a network of people that are interested in purchasing beef from somewhere other than the store, it isn't very difficult to sell what you can raise. Most other Dexter breeders that we know also have difficulty meeting the demand. We can sell whole animals far more easily than you can with other breeds, which appeals to a lot of people. It can really be a bother to try to arrange halves or quarters to several different customers at once.
Many of our live sales go to smaller farmettes, that have 5-10 acres and want to raise the cows or steers themselves following weaning. Dexters are practical for this, and for larger acreages such as ours, we can raise half again the number of animals than a larger breed. More animals equals higher income. To further extend our profitability, we practice intensive grazing, moving them twice per day most of the time, which has allowed us to stock our property with additional head yet still maintain our forage throughout the summer into the fall. We do not feed our cattle grain of any type, and finish them on grass. The beef is delicious, and once somebody has had a taste of it, not only are they customers but their friends start calling us inquiring on when we may have one for them! And with some of our Dexters being more prolific milkers, we have some live animals that go to people interested in their own milk cows.
It is important to start out with good foundation stock, they are easy to raise and handle if you do so. However, poor quality to start equals poor quality down the road and many more frustrations.
All of these different avenues to sell are the key to being profitable. Right now, the bulk of our sales are in live animals, though with quite a few bulls born last season, we'll finally be able to satisfy some of the demand for freezer beef (if we can keep any of the dang steers long enough without people purchasing them to raise themselves).
Lastly, we don't sell them cheap, if that's what some of you are thinking. But it helps a lot to be within a reasonable distance of a fairly well populated area, though that of course raises the land costs.
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