On my way back from the Oxford meeting this year, after taking Tom to London Heathrow airport, and then arriving in Dover a little early for our ferry connection, we ended up in a nearby park in order to have a picnic before getting on our boat.
Besides the ruins of a WWII bunker, the main feature of this park were an unusual breed of cows, uniquely suited for the white cliffs of Dover.
Waist high, and only a little larger than a very large dog, they were really kind of interesting cows.
Uh oh. Once my husband sees this, he’s going to want one. I have no idea where we’ll put it.
Okay. He saw it, showed it to me (as if I hadn’t already seen it), and said, “Can we get one?”
Hi Christina, according to Wikipedia these are a good breed for small holdings and becoming more and more popular!
My uncle had a mini herd of Dexters (4 black ones) he named each one a sister-in-law – my mum was furious until he told her the one he named after her was the most beautiful and had the nicest personality – my mum beamed with pride at this and he got away with it !!! knowing my uncle I am pretty sure he told each one the same story. But they were all beautiful and absolutely lovely cows. He kept his on his small holding / mini farm in Newcastle.
Christina – have you seen alpacas – I’d love some of those –
Glad to see the Dexter getting some promotion on your web-site Patrick. This is one of the breeds we are currently looking at for our farm along with belted galloway, both are fantastic utility breeds.
New to everything including cows. Want purchase small farm and raise Dexters (20) how much land needed??? Thank You in advance for any help you can give. Moving to central Ohio
Correction (2) Dexters
Hi Jim,
First I want to make clear that I don’t have any experience with cows. I only made this post because I happened to stop in my car next to this place where they were.
Having said this, if it helps to give you some idea, if you were to completely pasture raise an ordinary cow, you normally need about 5 acres of pasture per cow. If the Dexters are less than that, I don’t know. If you are planning on supplementing the pasture with purchased corn or grain, than it would certainly be less than this.
Now that you have my opinion, please go ask someone who really knows!
You might ask the folks on the Agriculture Biodiversity Weblog:
http://agro.biodiver.se/
They are not farmers either, but they may have the resources to look something like this up or know who to ask.
Good luck with the cows!