It’s getting to the point in the year where those with cattle are thinking about getting their cows bred. It is important to put a lot of thought into when your cows will get bred and what they are being bred to. It will determine when the calves are born and what your calves might look like.
This is about the time when we want to let our bull run with the cattle. Most around here start turning the bulls in with the cows around June. This would mean that they are shooting for a March calf. We thought that might be too early because our Marches can sometimes be very damp and cool. So, we thought we would wait until mid-July through August to get our cows/heifers bred. This would mean that we are shooting for a mid-April or May calf. This works better for us because, while it can still be very wet, it is starting to get warmer, and we think that it makes things easier for the calf.
Then we get to the idea of the specific traits that we want our calves to have. Dexter’s offer a lot of variety. They can be polled or horned, dun/black/red, and they can be long-legged or short-legged. These are just a few of the many variables that we are thinking about.
Our goal is to get long-legged, polled, and hopefully red calves (we like the red color best, but we also like the dun) that have fairly good sized utters. It is never easy to find and get exactly what you want, but we have come as close as we can and we are hoping it will work out.
About Our Bull
Just a few months ago, we bought a registered Dexter bull to breed our Dexter heifers and cows. He is long-legged (which eliminates the possibility of PHA and Chondroplasia), homozygous polled, and is red in color. So if we get him bred to our two dun and one red cow(s), then we should end up with calves that are polled, and long-legged. As for the color, we are guessing that they will either be red or dun. The only issue is that our cows/heifers range from 38-40 inches tall and weigh 550-750 pounds, and the bull is 49 inches tall and around 1100-1200 pounds. Just looking at them side-by-side, the bull looks substantially bigger than the cows, but from talking to individuals that have been in the business for a while, they said that it should not be an issue. Hopefully we can get them all bred soon so that, come April, we will have some little red/dun calves running around.
Thanks for reading!