While our pastures have been keeping ahead of us all summer we have seen the need to grow our small herd of 8 Dexter cattle, 2 of which are calves. We’ve been watching all the cattle boards and emailing breeders that were close by and found a good deal on a few cows that we had to go check out. We were able to pick up 4 new females from Tennessee on Saturday. This includes 3 cows and 1 young heifer. All are black and horned. (Our polled, dun bull may change our black herd over time.) So, now the total is 7 cows and 2 heifers, plus a bull and two steers.
Not seeing much rain in the last few months, these cows were a little on the skinny side but they should shape up well on our 10 acres of grasses and legumes. Right now they are in a small paddock of their own. We’ll wait a while to introduce them to the rest of the herd.
We’re growing in another area too but this was a much cheaper purchase. Two Saturdays ago we picked up a buff rooster and a red hen at a local poultry sale. We’re hoping that one of our hens will decide to sit on some eggs and eventually hatch us some more chickens! We could have used this rooster a few weeks ago when we had an especially broody hen. The rooster is proving to be very well behaved and so far is doing his job. :-) His name is Bruce and he’s a big buff colored bird that must have some Cochin in him because he’s got feathers on his legs. Geri has been saying for months that we needed a rooster named Bruce.
The hogs continue to eat thier fruit, nuts, bread, corn, and grasses and adding on pounds! I’m picking up persimmons every day to feed them and yesterday was able to get about 2.5 gallons from our 2 trees. The loved it. I also had a neighbor come and ask if I wanted his walnuts so I hope the hogs develope a taste for them too!
I’ll try and get some pictures up this weekend.
It’s cool that that you added to your herd! Even though I said I was done buying Dexters I should be on my way up to Dan’s this coming Saturday to pick up a young little red heifer. I just couldn’t resist the chance to try and add some red to the herd since our bull Hershey carries red. At least there will be a chance in the spring of 2010…
The way you keep buying cows I’m going to have to start calling you Ethan Butterfield! We’re up to 12 total and will hopefully have 14 by Christmas and one more calf in the beginning of next year. Hopefully one of the calves we’ll have around November will be out of your bull so we’ll let you know how it turns out.
We got one heifer out of a cow that you delivered to us and she’s a dandy! The beefy little cow is doing great on pasture too, she looks like she’s been grass-finished, but she’s still nursing a baby.
Just found your blog. Nice to see another Missouri Dexter breeder! Our Farm is in SoWeCen MO. We have a similar # as you. For the moment we have 1 outgoing bull, 1 incoming bull, 3 new babies, 3 experienced cows, 4 heifers due to calve soon, a last year’s heifer that will likely calve in the spring, and 2 freezer boys, one will go in a few weeks, the other next year. We keep having heifers! I’m pulling for some boys, then… while the meat is growing, we can have some more girls. I prefer my cattle w/ horns. We have one poled cow & I’d really like to sell her, just not my idea of what a dexter should look like.
We have 40 acres of pasture, so after reading your blog, I feel like we’re underutalizing our land terribly! We will be grazing w/ MIG this coming year. I had to get fencing up this last year. Doing it myself & it takes time! We also have goats & sheep, so we couldn’t go w/ just high tensile. Had to be 4″ weave goat fencing. We have about 20 of each and find that they do a wonderful job of keeping the alternate grazing/browsing species from taking over. They even have started eating the thistles!
We also have 4 Red Wattle hogs, one for the freezer, one boar & 2 gilts. I find it very interesting how many Dexter owners also have RW pigs, if they have pigs at all. We don’t do any row crops & are having to buy some pig feed this year. We’ll be buying fruit trees & will be feeding drops to the pigs next year. They are cleaning up the roots from the burdock, thistles & other plants that haunt us. We should have a ~10 year seed bank of those things, but their ‘crop’ will be less & less every year. We’re still working on the Hemlock. Can’t let it take over as the other plants recede!
I’ll be checking back to see how your hay situation goes over the winter. Did you buy hay? We did, but figure that it’s way more than we need. I’d rather come out of winter w/ a full barn than buy any when prices are so high. Good Luck w/ your cattle & hogs! Think about trying St. Croix sheep. They don’t need sheering, because they aren’t wool sheep. The meat is also much better than woolies. And, you won’t have to bush hog! They eat like goats, but are just much easier to contain!
Thanks for the comment. We have all horned animals except for our polled dun bull and a steer calf that is dun and probably polled. I’ll be writing about our hay situation soon and about how the pasture is doing. The have been off of the pasture since Oct 24th because it is so new but they will be back on it for another rotation at some point, maybe just very early in the spring, or maybe when the ground freezes.
We went to the National Small Farm Trade Show and Conf. and learned about St. Croix sheep there, Marian Van Beever also has them. We’re interested in trying a few at some point. Hopefully we could train them to our 6 wire high tensile.
We’ll be farrowing 7/8ths red wattle hogs next year some time too!
Actually, my farming partner is a goat person… she has ‘always’ had dairy goats. She thinks we should hold our numbers are 20 goat mamas & 30 sheep mamas. Why favoring sheep? Because they’re so much easier to keep in! I think you’d be able ot keep them in, they’re real homebodies! It was the goats that the fencing had to be put in for. That was before I found out about the meat sheep.
I just got a deal of $100/ea on a group of 15 SC sheep. They’re out of a foundation herd from Utah. Unfortuneatly, we can only afford to take 5 or 6. Email me privately if you’d like to see if you can pick a few up. I’m pretty sure they’re papered, or can be. I’m working thru someone in the Association to get them. I’ll have some purebred babies in the spring, from the 4 pb SC ewes we have. (We have Katahdins & Blackbellies as well, but we like the SC best.)