Chondrodysplasia

[jimbo]

hi folks,
I have a smallholding on the outskirts of Perth where I run a small livery, breed sporthorses, have a small flock of Jacob and xJacob sheep and a couple of heifer calves (British Blue cross and a British White cross) that we bucket reared.
I have a 15 acre field that has 50% young trees and on a hill. I wish to graze with cattle and am considering my options. I like the look of the Dexter and consider it might be ideally suited to the job.
During the course of my research I came accross the issue of chondro' in the Dexters. I am not concerned about the issue and have a grasp of the genetics but wish to know if Dexter breeders are making any attempt to 'breed out' carriers and if not, why not? As an outsider (at the moment) it would appear to me that chondro' is undesirable in any breed and as such attempts should be made to eradicate the condition. Am I wrong?

In addition What should I be paying for Dexters, (steers, heifers, cows, in-calf heifers/cows etc)? That's if I decide to go down the road of Dexters.

By the way the British White is also proving quite appealing and might be of more value commercially.
Cheers
Jim

[Broomcroft]

Hi Jim and welcome

Personally, I agree with you about chondro as do lots of others, but people breed for it and only they can explain why. I think its bad for the breed, it is constantly mentioned and carries a stigma with it. We stick to non-chondro and have found the cattle to be very hardy, don't do much damage, are easier inside because of their relatively small size, and it generally suits us have smaller cattle.

We put most of ours to an Angus bull and we've found that they do so well on grass / forage alone, that we leave calves on their dams almost until the next calf arrives. If we weaned them earlier, they'd put on fat even though suckling a calf that's as big as they are! To us they are a commercial (in the normal meaning of the word), low cost option.

Re prices, it is wide open. But as a general rule of thumb, if you are not looking for anything special-looking, or for showing etc, then heifers could be anything from say £200+ for weaners, and say up to £700-800 because that's about the beef value. If you came to me for a bulling heifer that is what you'd have to pay otherwise she goes for beef obviously.

If I were starting in Dexters, I would go for cows because they have obviously proved themselves but also, the price comes down. You should be able to get decent cows for their cull value without too much trouble. I just sold a batch of cows aged 10-12 at cull prices. The new owner will be taking 2-4 more calves off them, then cull, get her money back and use her home bred heifers from there on.

You can normally tell if a cow is chondro carrier or not by looking. If you buy pedigree, you can ask for test results. As you will know, if both parents are free of the dwarf gene, then the calf is 100% clear (and cannot pass it on either).

The other thing when you decide on the breed, is try the beef a few times. Dexter beef is really fantastic and I'm not saying that because we have the breed. We tasted loads of breeds for a whole year to decide which breed to go for, we could have chosen any. Dexter won easily with Angus in 2nd place (never tried British White though ). It has one thing that larger breeds cannot have, and that's a fine grain to the beef which is presumably because of the small size of the animal itself?

[ayrt1010]

What signs are there to look for in a chondro carrier please?

[Duncan MacIntyre]

The traditional "short legged" dexter is almost synonymous with Chondrodysplasia Carrier. Many older traditional breeders did not really regard "long legged2 Dexters as Dexters, and preferred to think of the as more like a kerry. The traditional short legged type was preferred for many years in shows, but now both types should have equal merit. The chondro carrier has, as the other term suggests, short legs. One old way to decide was said to be grasping the fore leg between the knee and the fetlock, and if the fetlock joint touched the lower side of the hand while the knee touched the top, then it was very likely to be "short legged" and a chondro carrier. Bear in mind that for many years the inheritance of the short legs was not scientifically proven or understood. In fact the whole animal tends to be shorter and more compact. Many look very beefy, though this may be an illusion because a similar amount of muscle is attached to shorter bones. The neck is often noticeably shorter and the head very chunky.
However in recent years some breeders of non carriers have been producing shorter animals and especially to the beginner the difference is not always obvious. Some animals fool even old hand, and really the way to be sure is by the DNA test for the chondrodysplasia gene. If you know that both parents were tested free, then they will breed only free animals.

For a new breeder starting, then it is perfectly possible to avoid the chondrodysplasia carriers and only purchase known chondro free animals. The advantages of the small size can be retained by breeding smaller types of "long legged" dexters - my own herd contains no chondrodysplasia, see them on facebook Burnside Dexter Cattle. I have difficulty putting pictures on here, always seems to go wrong, but I will post a picture of twin heifers we had many years ago,one long and one short. You will easily see the difference. If anyone wants them on here I can email the picture for someone else to post.

If you are attracted to small productive cattle, do not let the chondrodysplasia issue put you off!!

Duncan

[Rob R]

The other thing when you decide on the breed, is try the beef a few times. Dexter beef is really fantastic and I'm not saying that because we have the breed. We tasted loads of breeds for a whole year to decide which breed to go for, we could have chosen any. Dexter won easily with Angus in 2nd place (never tried British White though ). It has one thing that larger breeds cannot have, and that's a fine grain to the beef which is presumably because of the small size of the animal itself?

Just out of interest, did you try either Brown Swiss or Jersey beef at all?

[Broomcroft]

No Rob we didn't. We tried everything we could get hold of at Rare Breed Butchers, but they were just the main rare and traditional breeds. I didn't rate any of them being perfectly honest, except Longhorn which we had a few times and it was quite good. But we didn't get to try Jersey or Irish Moiled and others.

Duncan, Have you tried opening an account at Photobucket.com:
- then upload your image
- save it to your album
- go back to your album
- then copy the direct link underneath the image
- note: if you are using a Mac, don't rely on the "copied" message that comes up automatically when you hover over the box, actually press Apple "Command-C" to force it to copy
- finally, paste it into the box that comes up when you press the image button when you are creating your post

[Tim Watson]

Dear Jim,
Welcome to the website. We are beginners and there are people here with substantially more knowledge than I but we went through much the similar process before we got our Dexters 2 years ago.

We decided on Dexters over Belted Galloways as they are a smaller and lighter on the land and as we were new to cattle their size was less daunting. The facilities to handle them are less and we use sheep hurdles if we need to rather than cattle hurdles. In fact the only piece of cattle equipment we use is a Dexter crush and then only a couple of time a year. Probably everything you have for the horses would work well with the Dexters - including calving them in a stable box which I suspect one couldn't do with a larger breed.

They need minimum intervention from us and are grass fed with the exception of a few suckler cow rolls to make sure they are getting all the minerals they need. They live out all year round and whilst this year has been mild they were out in -14 last year with no ill effects. They were fed haylage when there was too much snow on the ground and slept tucked in under a hedge. They will happily share a field with the horses we have and you will be happy with the fact that they cut the ground up far less the horses as well.

We rotate them through the fields ahead of the horses and depending on the time of year and how much grass the horses need we might put the 20 ewes we have through the field behind the cows and before the horses to make sure they are tight on grass,

The beef is superb. I have eaten beef all over the world including Kobe in Japan and this is truly remarkable in terms of its tenderness and flavour which I am convinced is down to being grass fed. You can bring them on quicker if you want to by either supplementary feeding or by having better quality leys (I think Clive does this but he can confirm it). We do not have the ground or ability to plough and reseed for this kind of grass so are on permanent pasture which they are fine on.

Getting your 'eye' in to shorts or non short is tricky and I spent a long time looking at the cattle for sale photos which I found really useful. I was also very fortunate to be taken under the wing of a lovely lady called Beryl Rutherford who has sadly passed away now. She explained a lot as well.

For me, the non-short looks like a full size cow that has been shrunk, all over so when looking at it, it appears to be in proportion - head/ body/ legs. The non shorts can - to me - appear to be a normal sized Dexter body on short legs, so not as proportionate as the non shorts.

Then what really threw me was when I was told you could have short Non-Shorts and tall Non-Shorts . From memory Duncan has short Non-Shorts and if you look at www.woodmagic.co.uk these are all non Shorts as well (if you look at the 2009 herd photos and find 32, 33 and 38 you will see what I mean about proportions).

As Duncan said earlier do not be put off the breed by the Chondro gene. You can either test for it or breed it out and if you do have it, the way you breed will protect you from bulldog calves. Like Clive we don't like it.

The following link explains a lot and near the end of the article is the explanation of how breeding can avoid bulldog calve. Please be aware that there are some disturbing images in this document so be careful who might be able to see them.
http://www.dextercattle.org/genCDChondroarticle.htm

[Colin]

Just one further point to add to the comments from others. You mention your field has 50% young trees. My dexters love young trees and will peel the bark off them, eventually killing the trees. I've heard bark eating is a sign of mineral difficiency. Mine get access to plenty of minerals. They see young trees as another food source and just love stripping soft bark if they get the chance. So be warned if you intend to put your cattle amongst your trees.

Regards,

Colin

[Broomcroft]

Just one further point to add to the comments from others. You mention your field has 50% young trees. My dexters love young trees and will peel the bark off them, eventually killing the trees. I've heard bark eating is a sign of mineral difficiency. Mine get access to plenty of minerals. They see young trees as another food source and just love stripping soft bark if they get the chance. So be warned if you intend to put your cattle amongst your trees.

That's interesting, I let my cattle into an area with medium-sized trees and haven't had a problem Colin. My trees are a mixture of oak, ash and conifers and have reached the stage where the trunks are about 6" diameter. My Lleyn sheep will strip the bark off in no time though.

Maybe the cattle have to learn about eating the bark and then once they have, they go for it ? I'll have to keep an eye on them.

[Colin]

That's interesting, I let my cattle into an area with medium-sized trees and haven't had a problem Colin. My trees are a mixture of oak, ash and conifers and have reached the stage where the trunks are about 6" diameter. My Lleyn sheep will strip the bark off in no time though.

Don't know about ash, but I've got a couple of oaks of that size that seem to be okay (apart from the leaves). I would have thought conifers would have unpalatable bark. They love eating willow though, which we have a lot of, even having a go at decent sized trees. If the willow bark will tear, they'll strip it all the way around and well above head height. They've completely demolished a roan and also, unfortunately, a nice young chestnut tree that we thought was adequately protected. They've done their best with a hawthorn/hazel hedge too, although stock wire protected much of that.

Regards,

Colin

[Saffy]

We decided to allow a few dexters in to eat around a few smallish fruit trees at the bottom of the garden. We expected them to eat the few apples that were on the small apple tree but were shocked that they stripped it completely of every leaf, they didn't touch the bark though.

Stephanie

[Inger]

I would avoid Dexters if you are growing so many trees. Dexters are true foragers and will eat anything that they consider tasty. This is good for weed control (only goats and donkeys do a more thorough job), but it's not good for trees that you want to keep. Our fruit trees got halved in height, when some Dexter heifers squashed down the protective netting around them and got into them.

I also had one Dexter cow, strip a tree of mandarins and much of the foliage as well. I hope she got indigestion !

So in your case, I would put sheep under the trees and a multiple layered electric wire fence between and Dexters and your fruit trees. Geese are another option for keeping down the grass under orchard trees. They are efficient lawn mowers.

[Broomcroft]

If you want to graze around trees with sheep, get some Shropshire Sheep. They are genetically not interested in trees (will eat lower leaves though but shouldn't touch conifers or bark). We don't do Shropshires any more, but we used to sell them to orchards, tree plantations and even vineyards to graze the grass down, fertilise the soil and produce lamb all in one go.

See http://www.shropshire-sheep.co.uk/sheepintrees.html. You can get a booklet from the society if you're interested.

[goldshaft dexters]

Jim
Do not be afraid of Chondro - be aware of it. It is NOT a problem as long as you don't breed 2 carriers together from which you may get a bulldog calf.
The other genetic disorder Dexters carry is PHA (Pulmonary Hypoplasia & Anasarca) which in my opinion is much more "dangerous" than Chondrodysplasia. Unlike Chondro, PHA has no outward sign. If (when!) you choose Dexters as your new breed please make sure the PHA status of your animals is known. Again, PHA is NOT a problem AS LONG AS IT IS MANAGED CORRECTLY (again NEVER breed to carriers together). PHA IS a disorder which should be eventually "culled" from the breed. In saying that I have 2 PHA carriers in my herd but if they are sold they will only be sold as meat (& I will personally take them to the abattoir myself). Their other qualities make them worth breeding from. When I get a non-carrier from them, they will go. I have 2 Chondro cows also & I personally think they are the "true" Dexter (versus Kerrys as discussed above).
On a final note please be aware that Dexters are addictive!
Andrea

[Mark Bowles]

Just a couple of things in Andreas post. PHA in the UK is not a problem, i am not saying there has not been a case, there could well have been but to me it seems very rare. Other countries for some reason have it worse than we in the UK.
The second most important point, dexters are addictive and although many eminent people have tried to find a cure......there is none!