Feed Delivered; A Conversation with Roger Shaw, author of "The Commercial Dexter" article

Awfully foggy this morning when I did chores but later in the morning the sun started shining and it was beautiful out.

After I did chores I ate breakfast and drove into town for 4.5 hours of work at the Health Department. My progress on reorganizing their data is slow, but steady. I'm actually making pretty good progress on getting it into an organized schema given how badly it was organized and by the sheer number of duplicate files.

Dave H from the Farm Store came by with my load of feed, protein blocks and 4 hog panels. Clayton forgot to include the alfalfa/ranch cubes in the order but that was probably just as well as the cost of all this feed and protein blocks was pretty expensive. I can pick up alfalfa pellets and cubes any day I go to town.

I had a chance to talk to Roger Shaw. He's the guy that wrote the article on the commercial Dexter in The [Dexter] Record. He called me about 5:40pm and we talked on the phone till 6:30pm. I enjoyed every moment.

Roger lives in Nebraska. He has a commercial herd of Angus, Simmental, Maine Angou and others. He also has a registered Dexter herd. He mostly uses Dexter bulls on his regular cows as well as his Dexters. He assured me that in 99.9% of the cases the Dexter bull will have all the regular sized cows impregnated within 45 days.

He even told me how the bull does it. The bull will leap onto the back of the cow and while in the air will inseminate her. He may also get them when they're lying down. He stopped at two accounts, lol. I remain skeptical but am willing to be educated (especially if I can see it happening).

He sells Dexter steers for $x00. each at about 5-6 months of age. He often sells them to folks who want to buy a bred cow or heifer as companion animals. In fact, he assures me that he will not sell a cow to someone who does not have other cows.He's had too many of them go walkaway.

He sells bulls for a bit more; $xx00. but he also will lease them out for breeding @ xx.00/cow. Or, people can bring their cows to him for breeding. He charges the $xx.00 fee plus a dollar a day for feeding.

A 6-8 month old Dexter heifer sells for $xx0-xx00. An older momma cow and her calf will sell for around $xx00.

Basically what he does is breed his commercial herd to a Dexter bull. Then he takes the F1 generation and breeds the resulting cow to a second Dexter bull. The next generation (F2) is bred to an Angus or to a lowline Angus bull (he just acquired a lowline bull for about $x,000, a lot less than what I've seen them for out here). At this point in time he's keeping the F1 crosses for further cross breeding. I can't remember what he said he did about selling/butchering the large cows.

He sells meat for $1.75/lb which works out with cutting and wrapping to about $2.50/lb. I love the way he markets. When people come to his ranch to buy Dexters or just to look, he gives them a package of steak and a package of hamburger so that they can try the meat. He says this method brings him lots of business.

He told me that he cannot keep up with the demand for his animals and his butcher cows/steers.

He also has a stable of between 6 & 7 bulls of which 4 are actively used for breeding. The other two are youngsters who will eventually move into the breeding herd.

I didn't ask him if he was making any money at this effort but he does sound successful.

I've been trying to determine leg length on my current herd of Dexters. Here's what I think but I may be wrong. It's so hard for me to tell still.

Noel short legged; beef configuration
Emma long legged; dairy configuration
Pixie short legged; beef configuration
Brie long legged; dairy configuration
Cheddar short legged; beef configuration
Huck short legged; beef configuration

Chas cooked dinner tonight. I forgot what he called it but it was delicious. It's one of his Mom's old recipes. I went back for seconds. Bad me.