Dexters are a slow maturing breed and to be honest, they are best reared on a purely grass diet to about 3 yrs of age. However, as a result of the BSE scares and Foot and Mouth disease, the Government introduced legislation effectively banning the sale of beef on the bone for animals over 24 months old.  It is possible to produce beef off the bone up to the age of 30 months but then a special licensed abotoir and butcher have to be used and this dramatically increases the cost. 

The beef produced by Dexters is a "traditional" type, with a greater level of fat "marbling" than is seen is supermarket type of beef. It also tends to be darker, partially as result of the breed and partly as the carcase is properly hung to produce a tender and better flavoured meat.  In the recent cookery competition, ITV's British Best Dish, one of the regional finalist, Caroline Taylor, a producer of Dexters, came second with her Dexter Beef & Mushroom Pie.  The judges kept commenting on how the Dexter beef was the best, something I agree with.  After the programme, many producers of Dexter beef were inundated with enquires, it is amazing the power of the media.

When we were trying to decide on which cattle to have, our main criteria was that they had to be gentle, quite, good mothers and be a native breed.  Dexter's seemed the obvious choice and since making that decision, we have had no regrets.  In fact, I normally tell people that if our bull, Trojan, was a man, he would be sitting in front of the TV with a six pack of beer as he is so laid back.

We purchased our first Dexter's in July 2004 from a smallholding in Coton, near Cambridge.  They consisted of Trojan, a short legged red Bull, Peggy May, a black medium legged cow and Jay, a medium legged red cow.  Both cows were due to calf after their expected arrival date, but Jay surprised everyone by having her calf first! 

A year later, we purchased a young heifer, Stella and an older cow, Olga, with a calf at foot (Mr Steer).  Now four years later, our herd is now averaging around 20 in number.  We try where possible to sell Trojan's daughters for breeding and to keep the steers for beef.

All our cattle are kept grazing as long as possible supplemented by haylage when the grass becomes scarce but when the fields become to wet and poached thanks to the good old Essex clay, then we bring them into our barns.  They are given ad-lib hay or haylage which are cut either from our own fields or from other local fields and this is supplemented by apples, potatoes, carrots and barley.   Some of the young steers are also given some GM free beef cubes to "finish" them before the 24 months are up. An animal that is not properly "finished" tends not to have enough fat on the carcass. In the ideal world they would not go for beef until they are three years old and would not need the protein that the feed contains. 

We do not use any animal or fishmeal based feed and our feeds do not contain any hormones or growth promoters.  Our cattle are wormed twice a year and with effect from this year they also have the blue tongue vacinattion, we do, however, allow at least twice the regulatory withdrawal period before leaving the farm.  Antibiotics are only used when recommended by our vet and our farm medicine records are available to any potential customers.

Our calves are kept with their Mum's for at least three months, but we prefer if it is longer, but sometimes we have to move the young heifer calves to other grazing away from Trojan, our bull. 

We are very lucky to have a local Abbatoir for our animals,  and as well as only being half an hour away, they are also very understanding towards smallholders like ourselves who only bring in one animal at a time and allow us to arrive early, before anyone else so that the cattle are not stressed. We strongly believe that this is much more preferable to the common tendency these days, for animals to be transported long distances before reaching an abbatoir. We have even seen livestock being delivered from Scotland to our abbatoir in Essex.

The carcasses are then delivered to our Butcher who then uses his expertise and knowledge to hang our beef, we normally request him to hang the beef for 21 days but he is the expert and will let it hang until it reaches its premium quality which may be for a shorter period or indeed longer, this is what we are paying him for.  Our butcher will then cut the carcass according to our customer's requirements.