best meat...best milk breed???

[wynedot55]

pigment round the eyes cuts down on the pinkeye cases.

 

[pokacow]

I'm going for the Dexter as the perfect dual purpose. Meat is fabulous, & not too much. Milk rich for making butter, cheese & unless you have 12 kids you don't need 3-5gls of milk a day. Easy calving & long lived. Don't need rich expensive feed, bred to get along w/whatever is available on small farmholdings in Ireland. Best of all they are small enough to not be intimidating. Hurts enough to be stepped on by a 600lb cow, not wanting to try a 1600+!! If you breed for temperment & handle/train often most any cattle work. Just like any animal, temperments range from easy going to plain mean. Eat the mean ones & breed the nice ones! Haven't heard from owners that they are escape artists..can't be worse than goats.. The lady I'm getting mine from has chain link w/hotwire 1/2 way up & cross fences w/step in posts & hotwire tape. Some of the posts are VERY far apart & most are under 3ft high. I've never seen any of her 20 dexters running amok!! She still has flowers & a yard so they havn't been where they aren't supposed to be! Jody

 

[Hayladee]

Guess I'll have to put in a plug for my breed here. We raise Piedmontese cattle. They are hardy, originating in the alps in Italy and they have a white/grey body with black pigmented skin so they dont mind the sun and have a very low incidence of eye cancer. Its funny, they actually "tan".... If you keep them in the barn out of the sun their skin pigment under their tail is light greyishpink but if they are out in the sun it turns dark black. I love their faces, the ladies look like they have black mascara and eyeliner, and they have black hooves, tail brushes, noses and a black ring around the edges of their ears. They can be easily tamed and especially the bulls are heavily muscled so they have a high dressing percentage. They do not put on surface fat or masses of kidney fat and in studies done at the Meat animal research center in Nebraska, Piedmontese cross cattle came out on top in tenderness and also lowest in fat content, a real win/win proposition since they were also at the top in dressing percentages. I was out at the MARC facility last summer and picked up the testing results to read through, pretty cool place. Pieds are used as a dual purpose breed in Denmark and Italy but they cannot compete with the holsteins, brown swiss etc in milk volume and wouldnt be considered in the states as a milking breed.

 

[Farmer Kitty]

Pieds are not so easy to raise. If your looking for a easy meat with double muscle (which Peids also have and reason for less fat) to raise it's belgiun blues. Pieds are okay once you get them started but, they are a hard one to break to a pail. My BIL raised some crosses on the farm he was the herdsman on. When the cattle were sold he was given one calf and asked us to raise it. I told him it had to be completely pail broke before I would touch it. Supposedly it was when they brought it. It wasn't, believe me I never want one of them again! They are nice animals though.

Of course, if you can let the cows raise the calves you would be fine.

 

[allenacres]

Pieds are not so easy to raise. If your looking for a easy meat with double muscle (which Peids also have and reason for less fat) to raise it's belgiun blues. Pieds are okay once you get them started but, they are a hard one to break to a pail. My BIL raised some crosses on the farm he was the herdsman on. When the cattle were sold he was given one calf and asked us to raise it. I told him it had to be completely pail broke before I would touch it. Supposedly it was when they brought it. It wasn't, believe me I never want one of them again! They are nice animals though.

Of course, if you can let the cows raise the calves you would be fine.

You had experience with one calf that would not break to the pail and that gives you the impression of the whole breed that they not easy to raise?

 

[Farmer Kitty]

Pieds are not so easy to raise. If your looking for a easy meat with double muscle (which Peids also have and reason for less fat) to raise it's belgiun blues. Pieds are okay once you get them started but, they are a hard one to break to a pail. My BIL raised some crosses on the farm he was the herdsman on. When the cattle were sold he was given one calf and asked us to raise it. I told him it had to be completely pail broke before I would touch it. Supposedly it was when they brought it. It wasn't, believe me I never want one of them again! They are nice animals though.

Of course, if you can let the cows raise the calves you would be fine.

You had experience with one calf that would not break to the pail and that gives you the impression of the whole breed that they not easy to raise?

No, they had trouble with all their Peids. That is why I had told them it had to be good and pail broke before they brought it down.

 

[allenacres]

but those were crosses, not purebreds, wouldn't that make a difference?

 

[Hayladee]

Havent had much experience with bucket raising calves. Any calf that has been able to nurse its mom will resist any other food source. All ours run with momma for 5-6 months. I just came in from my daughters place, she got me out of bed at 2am cause she had a first timer starting to calve and needed help convincing her to come into the barn. She had already broken her water and we put her in a stall, put ob chains on and helped her get the head out then the rest just popped out with a swooosh. A pretty heifer and mommy and baby are getting to know eachother so I'm heading off to bed for another couple hours.
Actually Pieds are easier calving than Belgian Blues, they arent born with the double muscling....that shows up later at about 6 weeks of age. Blues are born with it and have more problems calving. Of course proper feeding in the last few weeks is important too. We give just hay and a good mineral lick the last month.

 

[Farmer Kitty]

Don't you just love those problem calvers in the middle of the night!

We haven't had much calving trouble with our blue crosses but, they are crosses.

The peids I was talking about were all hand raised on a dairy farm so it wasn't a case of being with mom and then taken away. I just wanted anyone going to handraise them to realise they are hard to start. As I said, if your going to let mom raise them then it's not an issue.

allenacres-they were crossed with holstein which isn't that hard to pail break.

 

[amyquilt]

In both breeds they have darker pigment around their eyes, so it seemed the flies didn't bother and cause pink eye as much.

At market sales they prefer the animals with color around their eyes. I would have to assume maybe this could be at least one of the reasons.

Interesting.