Dexter Height on Breed Standard

[Ted Neal]

Is it time that the breed dispensed with height limits on the breed standard?
As a European Cattle Society it is not possible to refuse registration of a calf if the parents are fully registered animals in the Socity Herd Book.
In the past it has been the shorts that most have strived to produce; but refreshingly it is the non-shorts that now seem to be in greater demand. With increasing non-short to non-short matings, for a more commercial carcase, then to include height limitations in the standard seems superfluous especially as you have to register within 30 days of birth and you haven't a clue how tall a calf will grow up to be.
Happy New Year one and all and don't forget your herd returns!!
All the best
Ted Neal

[Rob R]

Ooh, herd return - thanks!

(I've wondered about the height restriction too - there doesn't seem to be an advantage to having one as far as I can see)

[Duncan MacIntyre]

Why bother with a breed standard at all? Lets just register grand pianos tallboys and double deck buses if the colour matches breed description. but what about those who say why worry about colour as long as they are the right height? If we want to maintain a breed, we must make some effort to breed animals answering the breed description. I am not a fan of "lets only breed original population dexters", but firmly believe that all which has been allowed to be part of the Dexter breed by grading up etc must be recognised and respected. However, if we select for ever increasing size and height, we will inadvertantly or otherwise select for the genes of the larger breeds used in grading up, and over a long period we will lose the breed character. If we lose the breed character it is most probable that we will lose part of the very character of Dexter beef, let alone the advantages of size and all that brings to small scale farming.

In my own herd I am into problems of lack of height, even though I have no chondrodysplasia carriers. I will have to alter some of my breeding policy to avoid that.

Colour is equally important, and may well be linked to numerous other less obvious characteristics.

Polling opens another can of worms, with virtually all the polled genes in the breed having been introduced from other breeds. However since almost all breeders dehorn, how do they know that the horns they would have had would have been Dexter type horns or more like Jersey or Friesian? A bit of a dilema there for me.

I do believe we must look to the breed standard to define the main characteristics of a breed. The day we start picking and choosing which parts to abide by we have lost the breed- maybe not this year or next, but over a period with no breed standards applied, what would any breed consist of?

It may well be that we need to look at solutions to animals which only reveal that they do not meet breed standard as they age - the difficulties that that produces should not be used as an excuse to allow a free for all.

Duncan

[Broomcroft]

Dexters need to be small, that's what they are. Without that they aren't Dexters. Even the beef would suffer. It's exceptional taste is as much down to the fine grain of the fibres, because they are small animals, than it is from actual taste. The beef will always come out of top because the fine texture.

To apply a standard with regards to size is full of holes and almost ridiculous when you look at it carefully, but it still has to be done or at least attempted.

That's my twopence worth!

[ann]

In my own herd I am into problems of lack of height, even though I have no chondrodysplasia carriers. I will have to alter some of my breeding policy to avoid that.

I am firmly of the conclusion that if you only breed non short to non short you will get eventually a smaller more uniformed size.

The only ones I have in my herd that may be slightly on the top side are from shorts x non shorts.

However if our cattle are to small then they will not be viable in the long run as it cost as much to butcher a non short as a short but the return can be much less for the shorts.

I do think that some of the bulls you see in the show ring can look oversize but this is probably because most people show non short bulls and short cows. Which can result in some rather horrified remarks from members of the public.

[goldshaft dexters]

Here in Australia we have until 3 years of age to register unless it is going to be shown before then. This gives us the advantage of 1. seeing how the calf is growing out. A nice calf may not make a nice cow. 2. If the heifer (especially) is fertile. I have held off registering until I have seen what the heifer produces before the decision is made.
The other thing we do here is DNA parantage verification. Here a registered Dexter is a Dexter. Full stop. A lot of our cows are near the higher end of the height scale but they don't seem to be increasing in height.
I agree the height needs to be looked at but I don't agree it should be disbanded.

Andrea

[Mark Bowles]

Hi Ted, i like your style,"light the blue touch paper and retire".
Linear classification has highlighted a lot of things the breed has "let slip", height standards are one of them. There are a number of animals out there that are above and indeed below breed standard for height. The linear classification is a voluntary scheme, what we want within these classifications is compliance with breed standards to achieve credibility. There are adjustments we need to make on younger bulls (2/3 years old) that are measuring only just under the top height.
Like Duncan says, the breed standard is what we have to work to, we can't change it, would we really want to. If i understand it correctly according to the new bye laws,as a society we cannot change any part of the breed standard without a membership vote.

[Broomcroft]

As a European Cattle Society it is not possible to refuse registration of a calf if the parents are fully registered animals in the Socity Herd Book.

Unlikely I know, but if a pedigree Aberdeen Angus is born with a white blaze and lets add horns as well, it has to be allowed to be registered according to the EU!!! No wonder the Euro's in trouble. Where do they find these people

[Colin]

I agree we need to maintain a height standard. I don't see a lot of sense though in shorts using the same height standard as non-shorts. The measured height for a short is not a reflection of it's genetic potential but one that is heavily influenced by the chondro gene. A friend has a short which has produced a line of large non-short heifers, bigger than anything my non-shorts produce. I've noticed this elsewhere too. If we are breeding shorts to the same height standards as non-shorts there must be a risk we could be masking height changes in much of the registered gene pool.

There was a discussion on another recent thread on impact of better quality grazing on bull growth. Would it not be worth investigatng this further ? I wonder how many quality breeding bulls have outgrown the current standard.

Regards,

Colin

[Rob R]

There was a discussion on another recent thread on impact of better quality grazing on bull growth. Would it not be worth investigatng this further ? I wonder how many quality breeding bulls have outgrown the current standard.

Regards,

Colin

I wondered that about show bulls - do they ever measure them in the show ring? I can't recall any seeing any animals being measured, but it seems the most obvious place to start.

[davidw]

I doubt if any of the EU rule makers have ever seen a cow, or any other type of farm stock. I've been battling recently with a team of EU project managers who didn't know that farm work depended on the seasons. They also didn't understand ISO standards. As a result they bought 200 tractors with a variety of implements, but they can't be used because the two don't fit together. Oh well its only €50 million down the drain.

[carol d]

ah, I've been arguing about this for 30 years.

Everyone agrees the chondro gene affects height, and surely we all know the standard was set for dwarfs (the only type registered at the time), so of course we have many animals that cannot fit within the standard. Julie Cavanagh found a 6" difference in cows, and an 8" difference in bulls. Even allowing for a small sample that contained some upgraded animals, her figures are still pretty valid. I've seen Dexters all over the world, literally, and my guesses would have been 5" for cows and 7 for bulls: not that far off.

The most common compliant is that if we raise the standard, we are making the breed taller. This is simply not true IF YOU SEPARATE THE TWO TYPES. In reality, we are recognizing that there is a definite physical affect from chondro, and the standard as it stands today (around the world, I might add) is still set for the chondro carrier.

Stop for a second and have a look at the standards of each of our countries. Let's say we are working with cows, and the standard is 38 to 42 inches. Trying to make both types fit inside one single standard is actually creating the problem of under and over-sized Dexters. Humans have set a current standard that demands at least a third of the registered Dexters genetically CANNOT fit.

If you don't believe me, draw two parallel lines, horizontally, on a piece of paper. Mark them off in increments, from 32 to 52. Box the increments where your current standard falls. Now work from the dwarf perspective: if the animal is 38 inches, where would it's non-dwarf counterpart sit on the graph? (oh, golly, 44 inches? But that's too tall. We can't have that.) Now have a look at a taller dwarf, say 41 inches....OH, GOLLY, 47 INCHES? THAT'S HUGE. WE CAN'T HAVE THAT. It's just as bad from the other perspective: a small non-dwarf of say 40 inches could produce a carrier calf in the 34-5 inch range: again, perceived as too small for the standard. Even if Julie's figures are on the high side, and we use 5 and 7 inches instead, we are still trying to force genetically larger or smaller animals to a standard into which they cannot fit. It's not the animals that are out to lunch here, guys, it's us and our double standard and lack of understanding.

I know there will be a lot of argument about how it's not 5 or 6 inches, it's only a few. Yes, there are always exceptions. I' talking generalities here.

I think we need two standards. To fit the animals on the ground today, lets say for cows 34 to 42 for dwarfs, and 38 to 46 for nons. Numbers in this range would discourage the very tiny, and the very tall.

If we had the standard set for ONE of the types (say condro carriers), and then said the OTHER type should be (say) 5 or 6 inches taller for cows, and 7 or 8 inches taller for bulls, that would work. too, or visa versa.

Anyone out there willing to tackle this? Carol Davidson.

[Duncan MacIntyre]

More than 10 years ago I took the view that after 4 bulldogs from 3 females in 1 year I could no longer tolerate the chondrodysplasia gene in my herd, but I did want small cattle. So I set about creating a herd of small Dexters without it. I have for the most part succeeded, and now have more problems with under size than over size, all allegedly long legged. Most of my females hover around the 38" mark, and at the smallest extreme I have calved a 34 month heifer at 33" and just slaughtered a 27 month heifer at 35". If we can have "Dexter" sized Dexters without the chondro gene is this not the way to go? If we adopt Carol D's suggestion then the lower limit for non-chondro carriers would be 42" and the upper 48" for cows. NONE of my cows would meet these limits.

We must be wary of comparing the size of Dexters to the size of almost every other breed, since they have for the most part increased enormously in height during my working lifetime. And in some cases almost the whole breed character is lost -- Aberdeen Angus and Ayrshire being cases in point.

For many years Dexter females were described as having preferred height of 38 to 42", with 36 deemed acceptable. We can do this without bulldog genes, have true breeding animals. If anyone wants larger animals for economic reasons then change to a breed that meets these requirements.

Duncan

[carol d]

Hi Duncan. If I may insert a 'yeah, but..' here, I know it's possible to breed for height and NOT use chondro to do it, but how many others out there understand how to do this, or are able to with only a few animals and limited bulls? By the sounds of things, your animals are an exception. So, are you using genetics or feed or early breeding to limit heights? Let's hear from others and see what their heights are.

If you don't like the heights I picked, pick your own.

I think the point I was trying to make has been missed: as long as you have both types trying to fit into one standard, you either get a bunch of animals that don't fit, and can never fit, or you get exactly what others fear: a spread that fits both types would allow for huge dwarfs which then does exacerbate the problem, which is exactly where we are today.

Jayne Paynter's dwarfs were mostly around 40-41 inches; her nons were often in the 45-47 inch range. One of the reasons her animals did well in the show ring (apart from quality ) was that she kept the dwarf gene but used larger dwarfs, which looked more proportionate. The larger nons got kept for the milk line or were sold on--I've seen dozens of them and those genes are still out there. c.

[Jac]

Jayne Paynter's dwarfs were mostly around 40-41 inches; her nons were often in the 45-47 inch range. One of the reasons her animals did well in the show ring (apart from quality ) was that she kept the dwarf gene but used larger dwarfs, which looked more proportionate. The larger nons got kept for the milk line or were sold on--I've seen dozens of them and those genes are still out there. c.

I have the last female bred by Jayne Paynter, she will be 10 years old this year so is definately not going to grow any more - she is 44 inches at the hip.