The Cow for Anyone

Okay, that statement was a bit too all consuming; however, the truth is

there is a breed of cattle that will work for almost anyone with a bit of land

and a willingness to learn proper husbandry.

The Irish Dexter

This little cow is the whole homestead package.

A recovering breed on the American Livestock Breed Conservancy list,

this little cow does an awful lot on just a little.

We initially began our cow experience with a Jersey.

She was a stark raving beauty of a cow.

Huge, expressive doe eyes.

Loving, albeit not the brightest, personality.

What more could one ask for?

Well, with vast amount of land, resources, quality hay, pasture and 

time and dairy cow knowledge. . . 

Not much could be better. . .

But I did not have any of those things.

The years went on, more than two, in fact,

and our lovely cow grew and the fears of how we could

sustain such a cow here grew

(You can read about that here)

Size was one matter we couldn't overcome here.

The size of the Jersey is modest, as far as cows go, very much so.

When comparing, in these photos from the North American Livestock Expo

 that I took a few years ago, when comparing a Jersey to a:

Holstien

A Guernsey

or to the Brown Swiss

The dainty Jersey looks downright miniature. . .

But around 900 pounds of high production dairy cow, such as a Jersey,

still means big impact on the land.

This is not nearly the only reason the tiny sized Dexter

(pictured around 18 months old) makes such an excellent choice for a homestead:

 Dexters do make less impact on the land with their small size, it is true, 

and in a hilly area like West Virginia, this is a huge plus, but they also forage on weeds 

and brush, in addition to grass, by nature in a way most cattle do not, 

especially traditional dairy cows.

This breed does not strip the land in the way cows do

unless you grossly overgraze an area.

With proper rotation, 2 cows seem to do very well on 3 acres, 

especially if you use  rotational grazing. 

They eat things other breeds leave behind, making use of weeds and brush!

They have a high yielding carcass when used for meat, many breeders state.

As they are typically black, their meat is held in higher regard,

 as you find in "black" beef cows,

such as Angus verses Herefords, etc.

The meat is often said to be of exceptional, prime quality

They finished well as grass only beef cows.

Their small size makes them very easy to manage, 

and their bulls are known

to be among the most docile.

Wow, you say! What a cow!

But I am not through.

These are dual purpose animals.

They are a dual purpose dairy/beef animal, often milking well 

on grass only or with small amounts of grain.

Dairy goats and the vast majority of dairy cattle breeds cannot maintain condition

and, in a healthy way, produce on quality pasture only. This makes those 

looking to be totally self sustaining almost out of luck when it comes to finding an

animal for milk on the farm.

I love my dairy goats, and someday, with more land, I'd still consider a Jersey,

but the average small homestead can look solely at the hardy,

 milking Dexter as a beef and milk animal.

They can truly fill an off grid, sustainable or self sufficient farmer's dream!

You will not be flooded with more milk than you know what to do with.

You are looking at a gallon a day with the cow still feeding her calf,
 if you choose the right milk lines.

You get a high quality, high dress out beef animal that can finish on grass and forage.

You can a low impact creature on your land.

Dairy steers have little value in a market area (though the people
who take the time to finish them say the meat is excellent).
Dexter steers should have a beef value in a

market forum. They finish faster and have a beef carcass that people often prefer.

This is another economic advantage all around.

You do not have to be a rocket scientist to formulate a regime to prevent milk fever,

mastitis or any of the other plagues of the high production dairy cow because the Dexter

rarely has bouts of mastitis and hypocalcemia. They do not have the strain on their bodies of

 the high production cow. This is a huge benefit to the average small homestead farmer!

You do not have to be tied down to milking twice a day.
The Dexter can produce enough for her calf

or for a small family and her calf. You can milk, you can not milk.
 This is not the case, typically, with a Guernsey, Jersey, Holstein or Brown Swiss. 

While nothing will ever make me love the ever lovely Jersey less, 
for many people looking for a milk cow,

they need to choose on something more than a pretty face, and wow! 
Do those Jerseys ever have a lovely face!

Spring has Sprung

Our journey into successful seeds starting is still  a work in progress.

We have some plants growing very well, and then others, not so much. . . 

Some. . . not at all.

I really like the set up my co-farmer (read: Husband) set up with PVC pipe for

under $50, including lights, too!

I am certainly no gardening pro, but all in good time. . .

All in good time.

Happy Easter, and remember the reason we celebrate. . . 

Learning seed starting

I have a good grasp on animal husbandry. . .

What I have little knowledge on is growing plants.

 

Last year, my paltry attempts at seed starting ended up

doing very little. . .

I purchased them at Wal-mart as organic seeds and

hoped, prayed. . .

I failed at growing a darn thing from a seed,

and I purchased my started plants

a bit late in the spring from Southern States.

While they did grow,

 

 

There was not nearly as much satisfaction from the harvest

as there would have been if the plants had come from seeds

we nourished and watched grow, I am sure!

This year, we made some changes, though we

still did start a bit late in the year and have a huge amount

to figure out. . .

 

We purchased Heirloom, Non GMO seeds from:

 

My friend, Stephanie, at Pauley's Rowdy Acres

planted both Organic seeds and then seeds that were

from Baker Creek Heirloom Non-GMO seeds, 

and the latter has grown far, far better!

We also created, from a Grit Magazine article,

a neat and inexpensive light set up for starting seeds.

I would say the cost is under $50

 

They have been planted only 4 days, and the seeds are already sprouting!

We didn't get that far before!

We have planted heirloom varieties of

Tomato

Onion

Corn

Peas

Beans

Basil

Rosemary

Chives

Squash

Zucchini

and Broccoli

What are you breeding livestock for?

LUCAS FARM

I hear these statement so often from farmers and potential farm folks 
who are looking to purchase livestock:

"Oh, I'm not breeding for show", "not needing registered animals"  

or "not breeding for anything but pet quality," and over and over
I sigh and think, "What?!"

I am not suggesting you cannot own pet quality livestock 

simply for the joy of their companionship, and I encourage that in
non-breeding animals (as I want them to have good, quality homes regardless), 
but that is where it should end - if you're intention is to breed livestock
- you cannot cut corners on the quality 
of animal you're breeding or in their care.

Why do so many people try to find the cheapest animal they can? 


Well, they erroneously believe they are saving money.

Remember - a cheap animal has a reason for its price, just as those

high dollar animals have a reason for theirs. You can find quality animals

with an occasional deal, but searching for a good deal on truly QUALITY stock 
should only come once you know your breed standard and what

to look for, and that is typically a few years down the road.

I once was one of those "cut corners to save a buck" people quite a few years ago,
 so believe me when I tell you, save yourself a lot of time/money
 and avoid it to begin with. 

While we do not show and probably will never have

time for that, and the disease risks are too much for me to 

feel comfortable with, there is no reason to not bred 
animals that buyers can show. You are cutting off
a branch of profit few farmers can afford to cut off by
not breeding animals to their breed standard.

The pet market is always gluttoned with inferior livestock

 that cannot serve any purpose beyond that of meat,

as a companion or pet animal,  and even if you give the utmost attention 
to quality, you will still end up with a large percentage

of animals that would be best as companion animals, 
so you will supply that market even if you try your best
to not.

If you're breeding anything, there is no reason to not

breed for the best. It is fairly irresponsible to not try to breed 

animals that improve over generations, in my opinion. 

The pet market has no function in the 

farm world and little worth. Those animals can go to the 

often termed "Freezer Camp," but the fact is that

good breed stock is where you can make a profit, make a 

name and build a contact base that leads to many other connections

 vital to the small farm's survival. If you're only known as that farmer 

who sells the subpar animals in your local area for pets and meat, 
why on earth would anyone want to purchase your meats, your products 

or recommend your farm? If you put no thought into the breeding

of your animals, you are less likely to put excellence

into their care, their health and into the production of

all your products, or at least, this is a rational conclusion

many people will arrive at. 


I would.

For the sake of using where a lot of my knowledge lies,

I'll argue the start of this with Goats as the livestock in question,

but this applies to everything from 

rabbits to cattle, ducks to chickens, sheep to pigs, as

you will see. . .

The most important aspect of pet/subpar quality

verses breed stock quality livestock to remember is

that it is going to cost essentially as much to correctly feed

that unregistered, cross bred goat with poor udder attachment as it will a

nice, registered Saanen with good attachment and a milk record

behind her. While that poor goat is bred to some

random buck you find locally of indeterminable breeding

and gives you kids you cannot register or sell for more than $100 ea,

 doelings you can have little expectations of much milk production from

and bucks that will always need wethered without

any idea as to how well they will grow and reach market size, 

that nice doe would be giving you kids that - if marketed right - 

will bring at least $300, be predictable in type and production with

a steady size you can expect to achieve on wethers

and bucks you can, if you're selective, use to

improve your herd and others' herds. 

Many new and even experienced farm folks look

at their initial investment in livestock and think they are

saving money buying the $125 craigslist special

 over the $500 ADGA Saanen (or whatever actual breed) with

star milkers, Superior Genetics labeling, 

CH sire with excellent conformation.

You're not - 

You're not 10 times over. . 

You will have a dairy doe for a production life, if you're serious

about dairy animals, for at least 9 years, so let us see how much

your doe from Craiglist saved you over 9 years, averaging

2 kids per freshening, factoring in health issues and milk production:

#1 Craiglist Doe $150

+ $100 buck purchase 

2 kids

sold with horns on Craiglist

- $100 x 2

teats too small to hand milk

so kids dam raised, doe dried off when kids are sold

= negative - $50 the first year

#2 Breed Quality Doe $500

+ $150 stud fee to CH buck

2 kids

properly disbudded, tattooed  and 

sold with ADGA registration applications

- $350 x 2

= $50 credit the first year

plus have now built a tiny buyer base who should be pleased with

your stock and might recommend you to others

Wait, you have actually come out already ahead

with $50 in less than a year of ownership!

Of course, then factor in feed and medical costs,

and you're not really profiting . . .YET.

Say you live in a state where herd shares are possible,

The nice Saanen doe gives 17 lbs of milk a day because of the

attention to production her lineage was given

The Craiglist doe has teats too small

to milk, and even when you tried it, she seemed to give

1/3 a gallon, even though she was supposed

to have Saanen in her. 

You gave up.

You sell herd shares and receive $8 a gallon

and you make $88 a week on the  even 11 gallons

of milk you have weekly, once you build up your share 

program, and after feed costs and health costs,

you're still looking at as much as $160 a month

in profit. If you convert the milk into soap,

market it well, in areas that do not allow

herd shares, your profit would be more than 

the herd shares profit, if you're able to sell all

of your soap or you use the milk for drinking,

cheese, yogurt and more, and you've offset

your grocery bill.

Now, sit down and calculate this over

9 years of production. Do not forget

that after 9 years, with quality animals,

you should have offspring you've retained that

have improved in type and build your farm's

reputation for quality. After 9 years with

poor quality animals. . .you've either long

since thrown in the towel or have few 

repeat customers and are so far in the hole

in what you thought was a good deal, you do 

not even take stock of your losses.

Can I put it more plainly?

When do we assume in life that cheap is best when we are looking for a return? 

Do we buy our farm with land that clearly cannot 

support what we need out of it, a home that cannot contain the family we have, 

a location that doesn't give us reasonable access to whatever we need? 

If we want a start a small business, do we try our best to sabotage 

ourselves before we begin by putting ourselves in a poor location, 

doing no marketing,  doing anything less than stellar performance when we have the chance 

to show how good we are in our niche? 

Of course not.

So why try to cut corners so often when buying livestock?

Of course, in list of things we need, we often do make concessions, 

and in livestock, this does have to happen.

No animal is perfect, and the sky isn't always the limit.

We cannot all afford the finest quality, but if we truly cannot afford

good quality, we need to evaluate whether we can

even afford to give the animal a standard of care it must have, and if

we are honest and cannot invest in good breed stock, we aren't ready

to own the said animals.

With that in mind, there is no reason to start with

a CH doe from Saada, for instance, that might be offered for

sale for $2,500 or more, but there is no reason we cannot

invest in a doelings and a buck from first freshening does

from that herd or, if that is too high, purchase kids from someone who already

made the investment on such a doe and is selling the offspring.

If you start with a massive investment, you will be disappointed

because you will not understand proper care and you will not

yet have a buyer base willing to pay YOU what the kids

from such an animal would bring from an established breeder.

For instance, as much as I'd like to have purchased a herdsire buck

here at the farm directly from SAADA, I know that

at this point in the dairy game, I will get no more

for a kid sired by a GCH SAADA buck/doe and purchased directly from

that dairy, than I would the kids from my buck out of a GCH SAADA doe

but kidded out by a smaller breeder with a breeding she put together. 

My investment was less, though

still steep, but I have the same genetics and a similar quality and can

hope for a profit based on my market.

You have to know your market, then market your animals

to the best of your ability, realize they will not sell themselves and  

build a history of quality animals with a buyer base. 

By catering to bottom of the barrel buyers, you are throwing money away 

and producing animals to glutton a market and make the sales of good animals more difficult. 

Breed for your market, but never believe that will never mean unregistered 

and sub-par animals.

Also, we wary of ever buying for flash, especially in the goat world.

Blue eyes and spots mean nothing, and they should never, ever drive

your purchase. New buyers so often make this mistake! They select

from even a reasonably good herd. . .but then they buy the flashy doeling instead of

the more plainly colored doeling with better conformation.

People say things like, "You can't milk papers," but in some ways, you can. 

By registering with AGS/ADGA, you can tell if the animal's lineage was

on DHIR (milk test) how well the animals behind your's produced,

how long they carry production over time and they gives you can idea

of what to expect from your doe, buck's kids and so forth.

The registry will have provide you the ability to see the Linear Appraisal

of the animals behind your purchase and know the strengths, the udder traits, 

the body traits that facilitate good production and more. 

It is pertinent to stress that you will never get the prices out of offspring of 

unregistered stock that you will get from registered animals. 

Offspring sales will keep you going and keep your farm relevant in a breed market, so anything that garners more in terms of kids sales is vital and not to be missed out on.

Remember, registered does not mean quality, but unregistered

usually means lack there of. If a breeder is not willing to deal

in registered animals, they probably have paid

no attention to breed type, disbudding kids, disease

and a plethora of other important aspects to livestock husbandry.

Learn what quality means in the goat (or your animal in question)

- find out what flaws matter the most, avoid the ones that cannot  be overlooked. 

As listed with the ADGA:

Very Serious Defects

1. Udder that is:

a. Pendulous

b. Too distended to determine texture

c. Hard or swollen (except in does just 

fresh)

d. So uneven that one half is less than half

the size of the other half

e. Udder lacking in size in relation to the

doe

f. Double orifice in teat of doe

g. Extra teat(s) or teat(s) that has been cut

off in does

h. Leaking orifice

i. Misplaced orifice

2. Crooked face on does

3. Very crooked or malformed feet

Disqualifications

1. Total Blindness

2. Serious Emaciation

3. Permanent lameness or difficulty walking

4. Blind or non-functioning half of udder

5. Blind teat

6. Double teat(s)

7. Extra teat(s) that interfere with milking

8. Active mastitis or other cause of abnormal

milk

9. Evidence of hermaphroditism or other 

inability to reproduce

10. Permanent physical defects, such as a 

navel hernia

11. Crooked face on bucks

12. Extra teat(s) or teat(s) that have been cut 

off in bucks

13. Double orifice in teat of bucks

14. Buck with one testicle or abnormal 

testicle

Of course, a dairy goat should do far more than

just not have these serious faults, but in order

to understand what you're looking for,

more research is be required.

A good starting place is to review well

appraised animals, such as

this Superior Genetics, Champion Nubian doe:

SGCH Saada Tumba Al Hattal

LA'ed as 92EEEE

Compare her to the does you will see

for $175 on craiglist or local online classifieds

(this poor doeling was listed as a Purebred Nubian 

- she is clearly an Alpine/Pygmy cross)

(this doe is a Boer/Nubian cross and more reflective

of the type of quality you would get even in a full dairy

doe in the price range and from the type of seller

I am attempting to discourage - I do not know enough

about meat goats to say if this doe would be acceptable,

but I imagine she would not possibly be anything

 near ideal with that rump and topline)

To give you a bit of incite on market, reputation and genetics:

 When Hattal was with Saada, her

kids were $1,500 and reserved over a year in advance. 

When she was sold a new breeder, without the history SAADA has,

her kid price dropped to $1,000 

This is because it was no longer the

prestigious Saada in ownership of her,

but the truth is, sometimes genetics and records speak quite 

 loudly because her current owner, a breeder of good reputation, 

also has reservations a year in advance for kids at the $1,000 price.

Were a breeder with a shorter history, such as mine,

to purchase such a doe, I'd be looking at

$500-$600 for kids if I bred her to a buck of comparable quality.

No one typically, even with the right goals, is going to start out

with a doe of that cost/quality, and there is no reason to,

but you should start out with a doe at least between

such a doe and your run of the mill craiglist dairy doe,

and I assure you, if you care about milking, farming

and breeding animals in a proper way, you

will find a way to afford the right does, right buck; Once

you have your base stock, always breed to

improve whatever you started with, simple as that!

Buying quality animals will mean much less if you do

not strive to improve the herd, learn the ideal conformation, follow standard

husbandry practices and market your livestock.

This means, if you have dairy goats, for instance,

working toward taking part in Linear Appraisal and DHIR,

keeping up with records and paperwork for registering,

tattooing, disbudding, disease testing, bio-security measures,

milking the does for their entire lactations, feeding correct rations,

keeping up with hoof trimming, giving proper minerals and having

a working parasite management system, among other things.

So, I've only talked about dairy goats, but here is another

examples of the need to invest in the 

right stock and why. . .and how I learned the lesson.

Take poultry. . . 

There is a a nice added income to your farm in poultry if

you approach it the right way.

Select breeds you can find a market for,

consider being NPIP certified so you can legally ship 

your hatching eggs, get on forums like Backyard Chickens

and use Ebay for hatching egg sales, and make sure

to purchase the nicest quality birds you can find

as your breed stock.

While I've applied the purchasing high quality stock

to my larger livestock for a long time,

I did not initially think it mattered much  in poultry and purchased

willy-nilly from hatcheries all over the place. 

I have since sold all of those birds.

I decided I really would like to add Blue Laced Red Wyandottes

to my flock 1.5 years ago. I ended up with birds that looked

like this:

Nothing particularly wrong with that bird, until you see what

the actual hen should look like. I paid $20 for two dozen

of the hatching eggs that originated in chicks that looked

like the above BLRW. As I researched, I realized

Hatchery quality birds were never going to result in profitable

chick or hatching egg sales. I sold all of the young stock

and drove 2.5 hours, made an investment,

 and bought exhibition birds that made it through their

breeder's, Foley Waterfowl, cull process as quality animals

There was no way to compare the two. It 

was like an entirely different breed, but in fact,

it just shows the difference in poor and excellent quality.

I learned my lesson, and from then on,

my flock of all breeds have come from some of the nicest 

exhibition lines you will find.

Those BLRW from Foley's produced enough egg

and chick sales to pay for themselves many times

over and leave us with a profit!

While this has been a long read, for those that

stuck it out, keep in mind, I have a long way

to go to get to my goals, as should anyone in the first

5-15 years of a breeding program, but you must have

goals, and starting with good quality

animals, knowing their needs and understanding your

market and how to make it work for you

will certainly give you the longevity you will need

to be successful at farming with livestock!