Disappointing

[robin walker]

Both sales Carlisle and Stirling have come and gone for another year and from what i can read between the lines prices for pedigree breeding stock was very disappointing . I know from attending Stirling , prices were horrible , I for one brought cows home and did not accept the hammer price .
Attention now much be for all of us to look to the future and get the prices for good Dexters reaching a much higher level .
I don't know why buyers feel that pedigree registered stock should only be bought at unacceptable prices , but you know they are not to blame it is those of us selling the cattle that are at fault letting our cattle go . Until we take a stand and turn the cattle out the ring and load them back in the trailer taking them home we will never achieve a more realistic rate .
I know what many are saying that's all right if you are not running to capacity , for many their cattle must go .
Dexter beef has never been so much in demand and when the restauranteur's are looking for it , when the public are paying for it , why should those of us breeding accept the price at the mart ?.
I am I wrong ? , if so what's your thoughts ?.

[ann]

no you are not wrong, i very rarely put cattle into auction sales, but if i do i always put a reserve on them and they will certainly come home if they don't make it. May be if you don't have top notch cattle and don't have a home market its time to think about crossing them. At least that way you will get to keep your dexter cows and still make a profit.

the problem with supplying pubs and restaurants is being able have a constant supply and unless you can join up with like minded people who are producing animals of the same quality as your self you can soon lose customers

[robin walker]

Ann , you are perfectly correct about reserve prices but how many of us stick to it and how many sell at that low price after they come out the ring privately ?.
It's all very well crossing your cattle and I can understand that , dexters are a fantastic breed and adapt very well to crossing but then the beef is not true Dexter .
Sorry Ann I must disagree with you on having bad cattle , I think that' part of the trouble we have too many bad cattle and I don't think these bad cattle should be bred at all , even crossing .
That brings me onto your next perfect quote that continuity is part of the secret and that is much harder than it sounds .
We have a butcher in my area that would love to take Dexter but he would not wish to start selling it unless he could get 2 animals a week .

[Jac]

I think that' part of the trouble we have too many bad cattle and I don't think these bad cattle should be bred at all , even crossing.

Yes, the problems with low prices do not always seem to be associated with 'bad cattle'. At Melton for example, those offered up for sale were registered, halter-trained and having passed breed inspection.

It does make me wonder whether the Society should take the reserve situation out of the vendor's hands at sales where there are breed inspections and impose a minimum price unless of course, the vendor's reserve is higher than that figure.

[domsmith]

Auction sales are a lottery, you need buyers who want the cattle not just lookers who might buy one if its cheap enough.

Its all very well saying beef is in demand, but where are the retailers who are selling it. if there is a proper demand for beasts then the market will reflect that surely. The work that Veronica has done with Cranstons is the sort of thing you need. there is no joined up beef policy throughout the dexter society or the independant breeders.
the world of the dexter is too niche, the only option is to market your own beef. i dnt want to criticise the society, cause i couldnt be bothered to do any better. but they seem to have spent time protecting the term dexter beef, when really they should have been building outlets to market.
things can be called aberdeen angus with just the bull being angus.
to be dexter beef, you have to have both parents dexter and the animal notified or registered. this all protects the niche.

anyway to me its the nature of the beast with markets. good days, bad days.

dominic

[Broomcroft]

If you're disappointed money-wise, try crossing with a larger breed bull, something that is mainstream, Angus/Hereford/whatever is best in your area. But I wouldn't do it on heifers or anything too small. Then make sure the progeny are shown as Angus X (or whatever breed you chose) on their passport and they will sell much better at market or privately.

We're AI's to a top-of-the-range Angus this year as I haven't got the numbers to keep a bull any more. Any loss of premium price for the beef will be offset many times over by additional weight.

Make sure your passport says Angus X and not Dexter X, as that's a kiss of death at the market. One went through like that at our local market, guy had specified the wrong way round, and it went for £120. It would have been a £1000 steer in a years time! Not long before that, another pal put one through the same market but it was a Limo X (dexter), he got nearly £500 for the weaner.

The beef isn't pure obviously, but it is still top notch and highly saleable to butchers if you use a native breed, especially Angus, IMHO.

[Jac]

If you're disappointed money-wise, try crossing with a larger breed bull, something that is mainstream, Angus/Hereford/whatever is best in your area. But I wouldn't do it on heifers or anything too small. Then make sure the progeny are shown as Angus X (or whatever breed you chose) on their passport and they will sell much better at market or privately.

We're AI's to a top-of-the-range Angus this year as I haven't got the numbers to keep a bull any more. Any loss of premium price for the beef will be offset many times over by additional weight.

Make sure your passport says Angus X and not Dexter X, as that's a kiss of death at the market. One went through like that at our local market, guy had specified the wrong way round, and it went for £120. It would have been a £1000 steer in a years time! Not long before that, another pal put one through the same market but it was a Limo X (dexter), he got nearly £500 for the weaner.

The beef isn't pure obviously, but it is still top notch and highly saleable to butchers if you use a native breed, especially Angus, IMHO.

If more pedigree breeders did this in my opinion it would help the situation (although the Society may lose revenue) only crossing with pure Dexter if they had an established outlet for their beef, demand for their stock or increasing their herd.

I first had experience of this phenomenon a while ago when I sold a registered Dexter house cow with steer calf at foot to a couple who were just interested in milk and meat for the house but they were reluctant to send in any future female offspring the cow produced. I suggested that they AI'd the cow to an Angus with a good calving record and sure enough, female it was. Having obtained a passport with 'Beef X' on it they sent it through the local mart at about 12 months old (if that) and obtained £800 with no bother. It solved a moral dilemma - they didn't know whether it was going for finishing or to enter someone's suckler herd and were very happy with the return.
I would echo what Clive said about suitable cows for commercial cross - non-shorts 2nd calvers onwards.

[Broomcroft]

Spot on Jac and said much better than I ever could. Would just add that with AI'ing, you can buy sexed semen if you want all male or all female progeny (not 100% guaranteed though, but still high certainty). But it is quite expensive, say £35 a straw instead of £12. I'm thinking about using it but not made my mind up yet. I have chosen a bull though.

Also, if you have some not so good Dexters, you might be amazed at what you get when you cross to a quality bull.

[robin walker]

Sorry guys , nobody seems to be getting the point , why should we accept silly prices for pure Dexter cattle , ok everyone is going for the cross the easy way out , why should we have to cross to get a decent price . Some have said more pedigree Dexter breeders should be do this , why , why fool your selves by saying your breeding Dexters when you are actually breeding another animal , it is what I believe you call a Dangus , if you want big carcasses why not go the whole hog and change to a larger breed .
A Dexter with a Dexter is a Dexter , a Dexter with any cross is anything but .
You have stated putting a Dexter X Angus through the ring makes silly money but an Angus X Dexter makes 3to 4 times as much , I bet the butcher buying that animal advertises he is selling the Dexter and not the Angus , why because the word Dexter means a quality rarer animal .

[domsmith]

But dont you see Robin, the dexter is a niche product. there is avery limited pool of customers for it, if they dont want what you have to sell, then you have no other market and have to take th prices offered.

if you want to have some dexter beef this weekend were would you buy it. there are few if any outlets where you could purchase it. you might get lucky and be able to buy some mail order over the interweb. so all the publicity about the beef raising awareness but you will struggle to buy it.

that to me is the problem there is no route to market that the average breeder can use on a large scale.

get a supermarket involved! booths, morrisons, aldi. just look at the angus and shothorn societies. tesco looking to source 2500 head of angus every week!

dominic

[Broomcroft]

The buyer won't have known what the dam breed was Robin, only the sire is on the passport. So the steer that I saw sold, which was my breeding, was simply sold as a DexterX because the owner (completely new to cattle) had registered it incorrectly. Had the passport been done to the norm, it should have said AngusX, Dexter would not have been mentioned. I was probably the only person there who knew what it was, apart from the seller!

Why not go for the bigger breed? Because Dexters are a bit on the small side and Angus are far too big nowadays. I looked at medium-sized breeds (like North Devons) but decided against them all because there was little or no market locally. So a Dexter X something-bigger is good for us, we can keep the same equipment and gates etc. We do the same with sheep. We use a fairly light breed and put to bigger, muscle-bound tups. That keeps our costs down a fair bit and in both cases, cattle and sheep, but we get good hybrid vigour and growth rates in the offspring.

The value of cattle regarding size maybe has a lot to do with minimum carcass sizes accepted by the large abattoirs. At our local large abattoir, which I only use for culls, anything under 260kg's DW gets reduced in price. Also, the carcass grade with a cross should be better (depending on the bull), usually quite a lot better than a pure. So it isn't just that you get more meat, what you get is substantially more of the expensive cuts. So apart from being larger, the carcass is worth more per kilo. I've never worked it out exactly but perhaps a carcass that is 35% larger might be worth 55-65% more (that's a guesstimate but I bet it's not a million miles off the mark).

All of that, IMO, is why the prices are low. But having said that, they are still too low surely? I have thought of going round buying Dexters because of the low prices, but when you sit down and work out all the travelling, coming back empty sometimes or just with 1 or 2 beasts, it doesn't make sense unless from a very local market. Maybe that's another factor?

Having said that, we have never once sold a Dexter at less than beef value plus a bit for extra costs. But we'd never go to market, always private sales.

PS. Our beef is sold as what it is, there is no switch selling and would see no reason for it either.

[Jac]

Sorry guys , nobody seems to be getting the point , why should we accept silly prices for pure Dexter cattle , ok everyone is going for the cross the easy way out , why should we have to cross to get a decent price . Some have said more pedigree Dexter breeders should be do this , why , why fool your selves by saying your breeding Dexters when you are actually breeding another animal , it is what I believe you call a Dangus , if you want big carcasses why not go the whole hog and change to a larger breed .
A Dexter with a Dexter is a Dexter , a Dexter with any cross is anything but .
You have stated putting a Dexter X Angus through the ring makes silly money but an Angus X Dexter makes 3to 4 times as much , I bet the butcher buying that animal advertises he is selling the Dexter and not the Angus , why because the word Dexter means a quality rarer animal .

Beryl Rutherford once said that the average lifespan of a Dexter breeder was seven years. Many do not make it that far, those that do make it and beyond have learned to ‘dig in’ and by that I mean develop alternate strategies for survival of their purebred herd whilst all around them flounder only to rise like a phoenix from the ashes when the competition have gone - demand then exceeding supply. What I was suggesting is a way of reducing supply on the open market (of breeding animals) without yet more breeders 'going to the wall'.

There was a brilliant article written by Stephen B Blezinger entitled ‘The Purebred Cattle Business is a Journey not a Destination ' and although it is American it has much to commend it and very relevant to the situation that you and some other Dexter breeders are experiencing. It can be found here http://www.cattletoday.com/archive/2009/July/CT2015.php
(apologies do not know if the pasted link will work)

[Colin]

I was fortunate enough to find a country butcher who likes to sell something a bit special and has a very loyal customer base. So far, as I'm small scale, I've been neglecting our own freezer to try and keep up with his demand (not always successfully). I had been registering and keeping good quality heifers to increase my herd size, but now I'm going to beef heifers as well as steers. Next year I'll likely have a surplus and may need to find an additional outlet, so will be looking for something similar.

Based on the live sale prices I've seen online, it's prohibitive to sell live animals, regardless of how good I think they are. So I'm going to beef the lot and will only birth notify heifers unless I need to register one as a replacement.

Regards,

Colin

[Rob R]

Sorry guys , nobody seems to be getting the point , why should we accept silly prices for pure Dexter cattle , ok everyone is going for the cross the easy way out , why should we have to cross to get a decent price . Some have said more pedigree Dexter breeders should be do this , why , why fool your selves by saying your breeding Dexters when you are actually breeding another animal , it is what I believe you call a Dangus , if you want big carcasses why not go the whole hog and change to a larger breed .
A Dexter with a Dexter is a Dexter , a Dexter with any cross is anything but .
You have stated putting a Dexter X Angus through the ring makes silly money but an Angus X Dexter makes 3to 4 times as much , I bet the butcher buying that animal advertises he is selling the Dexter and not the Angus , why because the word Dexter means a quality rarer animal .

I know exactly where you are coming from Robin, from the early days when I first started keeping cattle I liked the Dexter, the small cow, and I have enjoyed breeding them pure. However, I now appreciate the need for crossing to ensure the breed becomes a commercial animal and doesn't remain a curosity that will surely die out if it doesn't have a viable future.

If you are crossing you are not selling out, quite the opposite; you are actually strengthening the core breed as you are creating demand for them. A farmer who crosses all his Dexters will always need to buy in new dams as no crossbreed breeds its own replacements. Think of the sucess of the North of England Mule sheep - the Swaledale hasn't been killed off by it, as it surely would if it relied entirely upon purebred offspring. Good quality Swaledales have to be bred pure to keep providing the mule mothers.

The very best Dexters are still kept for breeding pure and the not so good ones have more of a value than either breeding more not-so-good pure Dexters or beefing them. When more farmers see the potential there is for a cow that is cheap to keep

[Jac]

and the not so good ones have more of a value than either breeding more not-so-good pure Dexters

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.