Posted on 01/06/2009 6:48:36 AM PST by stillafreemind
The height of the Dexter bull is between 38 and 44 inches. The Dexter cow is between 36-42 inches. Because of their smaller size, some people mistakenly call them miniature. This is wrong. The Dexter Cattle Breed is a true breed. Dexters are, by nature, a smaller breed of cattle.
(Excerpt) Read more at associatedcontent.com ...
The Feds won’t even know you have only one or two, especially if you raise them for your own freezer beef.
If you don’t sell them at a sale barn, they won’t know jack.
Here’s a tip from production farmers: what Uncle doesn’t know won’t hurt you.
There are dairymen in the Twin Falls, ID area who have stacked up 1-ton hay bales in such a way that you cannot see into their dairies from the road, and they’re using hoop buildings so that you can’t see their herds from the air. These guys aren’t hiding one or two cattle - they’re hiding hundreds to thousands of head of dairy cattle.
All cattle fart and burp. Don’t sweat it. If you want to get a steer or two, ain’t no one gonna know you’ve got them unless you go bragging on it. Just make sure they have enough feed and water and they’ll stay pretty quiet. Let them run out of food and/or water and they’ll bellow until you do something about it - and then neighbors for a half-mile around will know there is a pissed-off bovine somewhere in the neighborhood.
If you can’t get into Dexters, a small Angus could be fed for the summer off 7.5 acres. Let’s assume your house+yard take up 1.5. That leaves one acre for your garden and 5 for pasture.
If you rotate a cow across the ground with a hot wire to prevent them from over-grazing the grass, you should be able to support one full-sized cow on 5 acres of grass there.
All the breeds of cattle from Scotland and Ireland tend to be thrifty and smaller-framed than the “continental” breeds that come from France/Germany/etc. The Celts had to make the most of what they had, which wasn’t much.
As a software developer I have had a chance to work with a couple of Dexter Breeders. They were good people to work with. We still market the herd management system to commercial and purebred breeders.
That’s what I was thinking. Thanks for confirming it. Gonna shoot for early spring.
Good lord man, it was a joke.
I actually moved from a farm I lived on for 12 years up here to the suburbs for my job. I went from 120 acres to a yard where I have to go pick up dog poop.
When times are better I will move back out. In Kansas you can still have cows in pastures... on roads where the only car that comes along that day is the mailman.
I have been here only two months but already I miss the stars at night.
Kind of depends on where you are, but basically when the weather is becoming mild, and there is enough for them to eat.
My four are dependant on hay at this time of the year, so I would not want to purchase any now because of that added expence, However, folks are in trouble right now and you may be able to pick some up cheap!
One cool thing to remember is they give about a gallon of Milk a day. More then we would use, so if we milked the remainder could be turned into Pig food.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.