Our Dexter Cattle

Our Dexter Cattle

As with all of our livestock, this is our first year with Dextle Cattle. We started with C-C, a registered heifer from a breeder in Navasota, Texas. C-C is red, horned, and is small even for a Dexter. She was born in September, 2007, and will be bred with a small Dexter bull for calving in Spring 2010.

Our second acquisition was Hilda, a registered Dexter cow who was the champion mature Dexter cow at the 2008 Houston Livestock Show and Exposition, and is bred to the champion bull. Hild is a dun color, and horned. Hilda came to us through Block Creek Ranch, near Comfort, Texas, which owned both her and her sire. Their calf, born December 13, 2008, is dun bull calf that we have named Levon.

Our third acquisition was named Tara Cotta when we bought her, but we have changed her name to what was probably intended, Terra Cotta. Terra is, we believe, pregnant and should calf Spring 2009. She is a dun cow, with no horns. Terra is the most personable of our cows and that, combined with her lack of horns, will make her our family milk cow.

We plan to grow our Dexter herd in the coming years, through artificial insemination with outstanding bulls. We will continue to breed for dun and red colors. Two of our cows have the recessive "bull-dog" gene, so we are breeding them to gene negative bulls. Hopefully, we will be able to breed this recessive gene out of our herd in the coming years. It is only adverse physically to a calf if both the cow and sire possess the gene.