A BETTER WAY TO FARM
Grass-Fed, Pasture-Raised, No Confinement, No Antibiotics, No Hormones, No Chemicals
Priorities: Honor nature, continually improve the soil, provide the best lives for our animals, and preserve and utilize heritage skills. Ensure our farm is sustainable, biodynamic, and a learning farm.
DEXTER FAMILY MILK COWS
We specialize in breeding and raising dual purpose registered Dexters. We retain a consistent breeding program keeping the true feet, legs, and udders conformation of the Dexter breed. We do not tolerate cattle with bad dispositions, so our cattle are well mannered and can all be handled daily. Our Dexter herd consists of ADCA registered as well as a handful of unregistered Dexter cattle. The herd is mostly polled, non-chondrodysplasia, and non-PHA (with one exception). Additionally, most of our cows are verified either A1A2 or A2A2. Our herd is genetically tested at UC Davis. We do not vaccinate. You can find details on each of our Dexters on the respective dam and sire pages.
As a breeder we want to ensure we are only working towards the betterment of the breed and as such we only offer 1-2 fully trained milk cows a year. We really wish we could keep up with the demand, but the quality of the training would be greatly diminished, and that's not what we want for the animals leaving our farm. A good milk cow is worth her weight in gold and will take care of your family for a long time to come.
All of our Dexter milk cows will train for a minimum of two lactation cycles. One lactation cycle is generally 10 months. We milk twice a day and use the milk for drinking, cooking, and making butter, ice cream, and cheese. We've also had quite a few bottle baby lambs and kids raised on these girls' milk! Our Dexter milk cows sell for $5,000. The price includes two animals, a registered Dexter cow just freshened with a young steer calf (minimum of 2 months) at her side. To be fully transparent with price: $2,500 is the minimum value of the cow, $500 confirmed bred back, $500 value on steer calf, and $1,500 for our time to train. We do not sell cow/calf pairs with heifers.
We usually have steer calves available at any given time in the year. On rare occasion, we may offer one of our registered Dexter breeding stock cows as a fully trained milk cow in an effort to increase genetic diversity in our herd.
If you have any other questions on pricing, please see the pricing page. If you have questions on availability, please send us a message. If you have questions on milking, please also send us a message! We are always happy to help.