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Welcome to the Online Farmer’s Gazette – Orginally Established in 1887

The original Gazette, published by the Royal Dublin Society, was a “Register of Pure Kerry Cattle and Dexters” in Ireland and three years later became the Kerry and Dexter Herdbook, with volume 1 appearing in 1890. This Gazette is not about the Dexter cattle. It’s about the Irish Dexter Cattlemen.

While Irish Dexters are in some respects superior as a stock, owing to their fattening as well as their milking qualities. Their beef is also most excellent. As was stated by His Excellency Lord Eglinton, ‘they are the thoroughbreds of cattle’. That is what we think is true about Irish Dexter Cattlemen, they are the thoroughbreds of cattlemen.

This Gazette focuses on these cattlemen as your guide using the best technology available to provide answers to you the rancher and farmer. It uses an online relational database to structure information into areas of interest so that you can focus on topics of which you are most interested. These areas of interest are what we call Community Groups. Farm Management, Beef, Milking & Dairy, Herd Health, Historical, Selling, and Technology are Community Groups lead by Community Directors who scour the Internet looking for information that is of interest to their specific group. That information is posted here in the Gazette in the form of original posts from Community Group content creators, posts from industry experts, online digital magazines, Irish Dexter Registry publications, and independent podcasts and video providers.

If you have a passion for what you do and would like to share it with others, we would love for you to contact us and become a wrangler involved with others sharing your passion who work to produce the Gazette. email: wrangler@irishdextercattlemen.com

Welcome to the Online Farmer’s Gazette – Orginally Established in 1887 Read More »

General

High Tech solution for making yogurt from the New England Cheesemaking Company.

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Clever idea to hold your yogurt at a constant temperature using sous vide!

We love to try different t cooking techniques and have used sous vide for many years with our Dexter steaks. Happy to have found another use for the sous vide immersion circulator. Next thing to try, is using it when making cheese. Thank you New England Cheesemaking Company!

High Tech solution for making yogurt from the New England Cheesemaking Company. Read More »

Milking & Dairy

Have you taken advantage of the Dex50 coupon?

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Here is a testimonial from someone who paid to get access to the Irish Dexter Cattlemen Gazette!

Yes. This is a big need. I believe there are a lot of people like us out there but the world is so commercialized that breeds like dexters don’t have as much information to learn from. This is gonna be a great tool for us and I’m sure it will help us grow more into what we’re wanting to accomplish on our farm in the future. Carrie Ann Bowers

Have you taken advantage of the Dex50 coupon? Read More »

General

Selling directly to consumers: How to find customers and market your beef

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In my last blog, I discussed how to find a plant to process your beef. In this edition, we’ll look at using social media to find customers and setting up a website.

Of course, word-of-mouth advertising is the cheapest way to advertise, but you may live in a small town or have already exhausted your possibilities through your existing network. One rancher friend of mine noted recently, “Many of my neighbors are also trying to sell directly to consumers and my small town is saturated with supply. What I need is more prospects.” 

https://www.beefmagazine.com/cattle-market-outlook/selling-directly-to-consumers-how-to-find-customers-and-market-your-beef

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Selling

USING FACEBOOK TO GENERATE FARM AND RANCH LEADS

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Generate More B2B Leads and Get Better Results from Facebook

  • What is the best way to generate farm and ranch leads on Facebook?
  • Can we mix our online and offline campaigns to maximize results?

In less than an hour, we’ll show you how we’ve used Facebook to enhance existing marketing campaigns and uncover new opportunities. Whether you’re deep inside of a marketing team or the leader of a small team of salespeople, this webinar will help you understand how to match Facebook‘s advertising platform to your sales cycle to generate more leads and get better results from your ad spend.

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Selling

Buyer BEWARE of AI Generated Dexter Cattle Books!

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Some of these are not like the others!

Danielle Lowther of Byrn Mawr Dexter farm sounded the alarms this month. She found a bunch of books listed on Amazon that must be AI generated with little to no knowledge of what a Dexter looks like, let alone how to care for them.

She posted these on a Facebook group she created called the Horned Dexter Cattle and called for Dexter owners and breeders to show what books they had in their libraries. This sparked several breeders to chime in and post on their sites. Dexter owners are very protective of this breed! Below are photos from several Dexter folks with their cherished books. Included are their names and farm names, incase you want to reach out to them. The imposters are the featured image here.

‘But, if you are looking for REAL information on Dexters, the breed and how to care for them, please consider supporting Irish Dexter Cattlemen by subscribing to one of our many membership levels.

Consider spending your money with a team that is working for you, with hundreds of vetted articles, podcasts and videos, stored in an easy to use, farmer designed, Multimedia Relational Database System that you can search thru with just a word or phase. An example: type in “minerals” and 9 different vetted articles show up for you! What’s in this Multimedia Relational Database System which we call the Gazette?
● Links to articles all over the Internet
● Educational, informative videos every farmer should see.
● Agricultural magazines
● Books in an online flip style format you can read on any of your devices.
● Journals produced by your favorite registry in online flip style format.
● Links to interesting podcasts for listening while working or driving.
● Blogs produced by experts in agriculture
● Historical material and Registry Herdbooks.
All of it organized by your particular area of interest, like Farm Management, or Herd Health, or Milk & Dairy, or Historical, or Selling & Marketing, or Homesteading, or New to Farming, or Farming Technology. Because it’s a Relational System, it’s also organized by topic, like grazing, milking, organic, regenerative, fencing, irrigation, breeding, and many more.
Use the code DEX50 for our March special 50% Membership Discount on any membership level!
…
But you may want to check out our Classified Listing System and all of our levels of membership and find an even better option for you and your farm. At the Breeder level…you can sell anything off your farm…heck even the farm!

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General Selling

Ask the butcher!

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The Wranglers at Irish Dexter Cattlemen are pleased to announce that we have a butcher on our team now! The folks at PipeDreams Butchery, located near Memphis TN, will be writing articles, doing videos and more. They are familiar with Dexters, as they used own them, milk them and breed them.

They are active on our Facebook group, so if you have a question about processing and post it…don’t be surprised if they answer you. If you have things that you would covered from a butchers perspective, please let us know and we will try to get it covered for you. All contributions, will first appear in the free monthly newsletter and then be archived in the membership Gazzette.

We personally use them for all our processing and are very happy with our cuts, the feedback on our animals and extra services including sausages, ancestral beef, smoking and curing. Very excited to have them participating in our beef community!

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Beef

Line Breeding vs. Inbreeding

I really enjoyed listening to this Chute Side podcast with Dr. Ryan Rathmann on the definitions and nuances of line breeding vs. inbreeding. As a beef producer he favors cross breeding, but I got a lot of good take-aways for my registered/purebred Dexter breeding program. He talks about the benefits line breeding can add to your herd, such as uniformity in offspring. He also talks about challenges and down sides to line breeding, and how to avoid.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chute-side/id1468813469?i=1000474332264

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Farm Management

Mobile Butchering

Mobile butchering, also called on-farm butchering definitely has its share of challenges. But, there are a few who are making it work, and excelling in this field! Farmers and producers are looking for options that minimize stress to the animal and cut out long transportation times to a butcher shop. Have you used a mobile butcher unit? Would you be willing to pay for a more costly service if it brought the benefits of an on-farm butchering?

https://www.farmanddairy.com/news/mobile-slaughter-units-are-rarely-more-than-a-pipe-dream/652487.html

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Beef

Favorite Steak Cuts

Ever wonder if you’re missing out on some great cuts because they’re not as common, or you don’t know how to prepare and cook them? Check out this video and you might learn about a steak cut you haven’t heard of, or gain a new tip on cooking and prepping a tried and true favorite.

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Beef

Corned Beef Recipe

St. Patricks Day is coming up, and what better way to celebrate the day than with some home cooked, Dexter corned beef! The link below is to a recipe I’ve been using for several years with great success. Corning is a traditional way of curing beef meat. It does take time, so you want to give yourself 5-7 days. This recipe does not use curing (also called pink) salt so it is nitrate free. You can add beets if you’d like the traditional color, or leave them out for just as tasty (though less colorful) corned beef.

https://www.growforagecookferment.com/how-to-make-corned-beef/

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Beef

Keeping Cows in the Winter Part #4

By Shelley Hatfield/Whippoorwill Pines Farm

Photo courtesy of Royal Fare Farm

Part #4 of this series is MUD, ugh!!!  I’m thinking that most of us have dealt with mud at one point or another.  Some of us deal with mud more than others.  Right now we are dealing with a lot of mud around my place. You have to really watch foot rot and thrush when you are dealing with mud.  Also you have to make sure they aren’t standing in mud because that makes it hard for them to stay warm.  Even if it is only their legs that are caked in mud.  If you don’t have much room for them to move around, you might want to add gravel and/or wood chips to help with the mud.  Another way to help them stay off mud is to do rotational grazing in the winter.  This lessens the chances that your pastures will turn to mud.  The cows will be moving all the time and won’t be staying in one area.  I hope these little articles are helping you all!!  Happy Winter!!

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Beef

Milk Fever – Prevention and treatment By Juliette Albrecht

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Juliette Albrecht is a contributing member of the Irish Dexter Cattlemen, who was born and raised in the dairy industry. She has helped a fellow IDC member save their cow. Look for her articles each month and for past articles in the Gazette.

Juliette also runs two Facebook groups. One is under her name. The other is called The Science of Owning Dairy Cattle.

☆☆ Milk Fever
It scares so many dairy cow owners, and for a rightful reason. However I hope that I can shed some light on it and take away a bit of that fear. Hypocalcemia (milk fever) is brought on by the sudden demand for calcium that comes prior to delivery and directly afterwards. This taps her muscles, which carry that, heavily. In a pre calving scenario it will affect labor, since the cow needs muscles to contract. Often in this case she will need assistance. Characterized by lethargic movement, dull, dark eyes, and drop in body temperature, it can also lead to her going “down.”

●● Prevention

First calf heifers are less prone to this, but it CAN happen in them. Commonly it affects 3rd lactation and beyond. From the time she delivers her calf you are either setting her up for a great following lactation, or one doomed to fail. It all start with NUTRITION. Dairy cattle are beautiful, but oh so delicate. She needs fiber, energy, starch, protein, bypass protein and minerals to simply survive. (Keep an eye out for Mariah Gull and her weekly posts regarding this subject!) When a cow calves in she loses body weight rather rapidly. During this time she “milks off” condition. Peak is considered to be day 30 to 90 in milk. If she is being fed correctly, she will not become too thin. Coupled with a good deworming protocol, she will slowly regain weight. At roughly day 80 she ideally will be bred back, and than her body weight will continue to rise. Grain should rise as she peaks to meet her milk volume, than slowly decrease as it falls. If she goes into late stage lactation either too thin or on the alternate, overweight, she is being setup for metabolic problems. During the dry period I either cut grain off completely (during spring and summer grazing, when forage quality is high) or feed a 2 to 3 lb per head feeding rate during the fall and winter.

Transition refers to the time before estimated due date. This commonly starts at 3 weeks out from calving, and technically extends to 30 days in milk. This is my protocol.

1) stop salt access, as it increases the chance of edema.

2) feed either a high fiber, grassy hay or have her graze similar.

3) feed 3 lbs a day of our parlor grain (18 percent protein)

4) top dress with the negative DCAD Soy Chlor

Five to seven days prior to delivery her appetite will drop. If it is significant I give B Complex.

On this protocol I see very little metabolic problems. However I always give Bovikalc to…

A) an assisted birth

B) twins

C) a cow with a known history for metabolic problems (milk fever, metritis, ketosis)

Should she go down, IV calcium is the only way to get her back up.

A cow that has had milk fever typically never reaches her full potential in milk volume for that lactation.

Milk Fever – Prevention and treatment By Juliette Albrecht Read More »

Milking & Dairy
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