Guide To Buying Your First Dexter Cow #3 (Polled VS Horned)

should your very first dexter cow be pulled or horned let's find out back to dexter ranch into the third video of a series that i'm calling a guide to buying your very first dexter cow the first video we spoke about things that you needed to have on your farm before bringing your first couple of cows home the second video we talked about the finding and the buying process in some pretty good detail so check those two videos out this third video we're going to be discussing whether or not you should buy a pulled or a horned dexter cow for the first couple that you bring on your farm i've seen some pretty heated arguments in facebook groups and online forums about not necessarily whether or not your first dexter cow should be horned or pulled but just simply whether or not a true dexter cow is horned or pulled one group of people will argue that dexter cattle with horns are the only true dexter cattle and one group of people will argue that pulled dexter cattle have been around forever so whether or not dexter cattle have been horned since the beginning of time or if they've been polled since the beginning of time or both today in 2021 all of the registries recognized both horned and pulled so it becomes really a moot point that being said which one should you buy for your very first dexter cows on your farm so there's a few things that you need to ask yourself in order to make this decision for yourself the first one is what do you intend to do with these cows what's your business model on your farm going to be do you intend to do a cow calf operation where you're selling live animals for a premium price maybe you just intend to do beef and possibly you want to take cows raise them up and train them to be milk cows to sell to local homesteaders and landowners in your area if you intended to do a cow calf operation where you were selling live animals such as breeding stock i would probably recommend that you do pulled cattle pulled dexter cattle generally sell for a higher price than horned cattle i didn't make that rule that's just the way it is pulled cattle are just in a higher demand than horned dexter catalar if you intended to sell your dexter cattle for just beef i would probably recommend that you buy horned dexter cattle you can buy them for a cheaper price the beef is no different from the polled to the horned cattle and you can dis-bud the horns as calves and you'll never even know that they had horns if you just simply don't want to deal with the horns on your farm then if you intended to raise them up and train them as milking cows to be sold to families as a family milk cow then again i would probably recommend pulled dexter cows just because they're going to be more desirable to your buyer if they're pulled in my situation i intend on doing a little bit of each i have both on my farm i have horn cattle and i have pulled cattle on my farm another thing to consider would be if you live in an area that has a lot of predators i don't have a lot of predators in my area probably the biggest predator in my area would be a coyote and i've never had a problem with one it's not a big concern for me but if you do live in an area that has bears or bobcats things like this the horns will help them to protect themselves a little bit better from those predators probably the last consideration that would go into this decision-making process would be your experience around cattle being around cattle in general is something that definitely takes some time to get used to horns are not it just takes some time to get used to being around cattle they're a big powerful animal even dexter's being a half-sized cow they're still very very strong could definitely hurt you if they wanted to having those horns up on top of their head definitely can add to that stress you know increase the time that it may take you to settle in and have a comfort level of being around them having small children on your property which i think most of us do kids are generally kind of right at that height right at that horn height my recommendation if you don't have any experience around cattle and you and you're really interested in getting the dexter's with horns would be to really make sure that you spend an adequate amount of time around the cows that you're gonna purchase before buying them so to summarize guys the three topics that we hit on are what are you gonna be doing with these cows what's your business model two and probably least important was do these cows need these horns in order to protect themselves in your area cows without horns can still protect themselves cows with horns are a little bit more effective at it and three and probably the most important was your experience level and your comfort level with having a horned cow on your farm at this time so hopefully this has given you guys the tools to make an informed decision on this sorry it wasn't a clear cut answer but it really does boil down to your particular situation if you guys have more thoughts on this topic then leave them in the comments down below i love hearing what you guys are doing with your cattle on your farms this video was helpful to you then hit the like button and if you haven't yet then please consider subscribing to dexter ranch and we'll see you on the next one guys bye

Channel: Dexter Ranch

Views: 2,694

Rating: 4.9669423 out of 5

Keywords: Dexter cattle, Guide to buying your first Dexter Cow, Dexter cow, polled cattle, horned cow, polled cow, horned cattle, cost of Dexter cattle, Caring for Dexter cattle, Raising Dexter cattle, Dexter calf, raising cattle, caring for cattle, starting a small farm, profitable cattle, best small farm cow, Best family milk cow, Best cattle for homestead

Id: iTvbNRxcbXA

Length: 6min 14sec (374 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021