The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Cattle => Topic started by: Sbom on July 06, 2014, 03:51:39 pm
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This is our first cross bred calf born today, hopefully will produce a bigger carcass with Dexter flavour! For now he's just very cute :love:
(http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff102/chuckie956/imagejpg3.jpg) (http://s237.photobucket.com/user/chuckie956/media/imagejpg3.jpg.html)
(http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff102/chuckie956/imagejpg5.jpg) (http://s237.photobucket.com/user/chuckie956/media/imagejpg5.jpg.html)
(http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff102/chuckie956/imagejpg6.jpg) (http://s237.photobucket.com/user/chuckie956/media/imagejpg6.jpg.html)
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Yes, he is very cute :thumbsup:
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He looks grand :)
Did you use Belgian Blue or British Blue? I ask because they've done a lot of work with the British bloodlines to minimise some of the problems that double muscling can cause. One of the ways they've done it is to breed for shorter gestation, so the calves are born a few days earlier and that little bit smaller. Yours doesn't look small! lol. But maybe he just looks huge because she's a small cow.
Either ways, that's a fine calf :thumbsup:
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Belgian Blue, Boherard Cian, he's an easy calving bull who's used by a dairy farm I milk at so I knew he should be easy calving!
He's a good size really, I just helped a little as she's an older girl and I was aware it would be a bigger calf than she normally has.
Were very pleased with him :thumbsup: he's got little roan bits on him now he's fluffed up
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He looks grand :thumbsup:
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:wave: nice calf :thumbsup: .almost as nice as my hereford ;) . did she manage on her own or did u need to give her a hand ?
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:love: cute
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She probably would have managed but I gave her a hand as she is getting on abit now and I wasn't sure just how big the calf would be!
Only a rope pull though, certainly no calving aid needed
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do you have any current pics of the calf? just curious to see how he turns out :excited:
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Congrats :thumbsup:
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Will get a couple more pics to post
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I would be very interested to know the size weights of the calf when older :thinking:
200 day weight would be fascinating
in 2-3 years we would be looking at getting some low input hardy animals to produce beef stores, but they would have to be salable as stores in commercial live markets, pure dexters are too low value for us but would be interesting to see how the crossbred calf turns out
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dexter beef was on tv yesterday - "taste of Britain".
:thumbsup:
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Ladygrey, We are crossing Dexter to Galloway to produce a small hardy heifer for that reason. We can then AI with something larger for a marketable carcass, probably short horn the aim being to sell to Morrison's.
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Sbom, that is a very nice cow as well! How old is she?
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She's 10 or 11 now, she's lovely