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Dual- Purpose Dexters for an Equal Show

This article written in 18 September 1989 from Reading Evening Post lets us know that much of the confusion on judging dual-purpose Dexters has been around for a long time. Dexters are a dual-purpose breed, so both dairy and beef traits are supposed to be considered equally, therefor a well-balanced Dexter in both traits would be most apt to win a show if a judge were to judge accordingly. The common problem is that when judges consider a Dexter, they will look at it with their beef or dairy perspective and have a hard time balancing the two as many judges are most accustomed to judging one or the other. The only thing that keeps judges in line with a breed is having an accurate standard to breed by and a scale of points to score by. No judge should be asked such a difficult task of judging a breed without the standard of the breed as it sets him up to only fall back on his personal area of expertise which may be dairy or beef.

              This article gives a quote by a Miss King, it says “preparation for shows really took place the whole year long, but she did not believe in doing too much to her cattle before they were shown.” She went onto say “If my herd is not good enough to win off its own back, then I shouldn’t win”. The value in this statement is that one must properly care for their livestock all year round if you expect them to win a show, but good quality cattle look great even when just standing unprepared in a pasture.

              It is interesting to note that this Jay king would have been the woman who owned the Saltaire herd. The Saltaire herd produced one of the most well-known bulls in all of history due to his major impact on the breed by spreading polled genetics far and wide. He was born about 1 year after this article on Sep 29^th 1990. Here is a photo out of the 1989 DexterCattle Society Herd book of a Saltaire Bridie both bred and owned by Jay King.

Saltaire Breeding Record for 1989

Here is a breeding record for the Saltaire herd in 1989 from the Dexter Cattle Society Herd Book. It is interesting to note that only 15 out of 27 calves were living calves. People often wonder if Chondro carriers were much more prevalent in days past and the answer is yes, they were. We cannot go back and genetically test them to prove their chondro status, but the notes of bulldog calves shows that a large majority of Dexters were chondro carriers, and the pictures tend demonstrate this by their phenotype. For reasons like this, no one could ever deny that the chondro dwarf Dexter had a major role in the History of Dexter cattle.

This Article was written by Danielle of Bryn Mawr. If you wish to reshare this article, please contact the writer first. This article was written to share facts and let the reader use those facts for their own education.