Comments on: Still Growing

By: Evelyn

Evelyn — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:25:12 +0000

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.)

By: Steven

Steven — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:08:41 +0000

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!

By: Evelyn

Evelyn — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:38:15 +0000

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!

By: Steven

Steven — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:01:18 +0000

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.

By: Ethan Book

Ethan Book — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:24:00 +0000

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…