{"id":8189,"date":"2025-08-14T14:58:36","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T18:58:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irishdextercattlemen.com\/staging\/?p=8189"},"modified":"2025-08-14T19:47:53","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T23:47:53","slug":"the-importance-of-the-dexter-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irishdextercattlemen.com\/staging\/the-importance-of-the-dexter-head\/","title":{"rendered":"The importance of the Dexter Head"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Did you know the look of a Dexter’s head was important to breeders and that there was what was considered a \u201cDexter Head\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHarley Penelope is good to carry in one’s eye as a type of a good Dexter cow. She has the quality and character, a sweet small Dexter head and carries her horns well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI lost my heart to Red Rose, a very beautiful cow, she has the Dexter head to perfection\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did you know that Dexters were known to give a good milk yield for their size and excelled on lower quality pasture?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNaturally in these times, when the economy of feeding stock is of importance, the hardiness of a Dexter, the large milk given by them on a small quantity of food, and their ability to thrive on poor pastures make them particularly attractive\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did you know that breeders put a lot of emphasis of breeding to \u201cpedigree and type\u201d not just pedigree or type alone? That people wanted to keep their diets similar so that they could retain their original attributes including size and hardiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt must be born in mind that these cows are not fed on cake: no doubt on higher feeding these records should be raised to 1500lb or 2,000 lb more than those given above, but Lady Kathleen Morant told me: I do not feed with cake ect., I try to keep them as much as possible on the same lines as the Irish peasant would do because I feel that is the best way of keeping them true to type and from getting them large and coarse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these thoughts can be found in this newspaper clipping from 1917, in reference to Kathleen Morant\u2019s Dexter herd along with pictures that describe even more than the words written in black and white can relate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Did you know the look of a Dexter’s head was important to breeders and that there was what was considered a \u201cDexter Head\u201d? \u201cHarley Penelope is good to carry in one’s eye as a type of a good Dexter cow. She has the quality and character, a sweet small Dexter head and carries her horns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4535,"featured_media":8190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[20,137],"class_list":["post-8189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-historical","tag-historical","tag-irishdexters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irishdextercattlemen.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irishdextercattlemen.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irishdextercattlemen.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irishdextercattlemen.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4535"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irishdextercattlemen.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/irishdextercattlemen.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irishdextercattlemen.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irishdextercattlemen.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irishdextercattlemen.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irishdextercattlemen.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}