News
17th August
An article about our herd is in the Sunday Times paper today. The article is about 'house cows' and people keeping Dexters for home produced beef and milk. We had a photographer come down for the afternoon to photograph one of our cows Ruby. Alex who is the tallest was chosen to stand next to Ruby, thus making our non short Dexters look smaller than they really are! Ruby was very easy to photograph as she happily followed Alex holding an apple anywhere!
8th August
Ruby, our last cow to calve this year has given birth to a bouncy boy. Unfortunately she contracted mastitis a couple of days ago which Caroline spotted even though the classic signs were not evident. We had just treated her mastitis this afternoon when she disappeared off to her chosen spot and promptly gave birth.
14th July 2008
Ruby who has been keeping us guessing as to when she will calve looked a little slimmer this morning. Hopefully this is a sign that her calf is engaging. Good news to follow, we hope!
8th July 2008
We now have four calves. The new addition is a red heifer calf called Liberty Erol. Opposite is a photo of Liberty Emperor - son of Liberty Cleopatra.
5th July 2008
We have now had 3 of the 5 expected calves born. Two boys, Eros who is red and Emperor who is black and a black heifer calf called Ebony. All three are doing very well. Photos will be uploaded shortly...
1st July 2008
Today I graduated from the Royal (Dick) Veterinary School... finally a vet! Now I am looking for a job! If anyone knows of a farm vet job vacancy then please will you let me know!
16th June 2008
Today we had the first calf of the season born. He is a healthy, red, male calf called Eros. This year all of our calves will have names beginning with the letter 'E'. Any suggestions are welcome!
10th May 2008
All of our Dexters (and our sheep) have now been vaccinated with the bluetongue vaccine. It took 5 hours!!! The Dexters will need their second vaccination in 3 weeks time. Sheep only require one vaccination.6th May 2008
The bluetongue vaccine has finally been made available to farmers in the South East of England. We will be vaccinating all of our cattle and sheep at the weekend. We will also be applying Butox Swish pour-on to the cattle this weekend, to kill any midges while the vaccine has time to work.4th September 2007
Very sadly we lost one of our breeding cows last week. She has orphaned Domino, an 8 week old heifer calf. We have now successfully adopted Domino onto Rosie (one of our other breeding cows who also has an 8 week old calf called Duke). The adoption involved penning Domino the orphan calf in with Rosie and Duke for 5 days to ensure an adequate 'bond' formed between them. They are now back with the rest of the herd, with Duke and Domino sharing the milk producd by Rosie.
14th August
Due to the suspect case of Foot and Mouth Disease in Kent (about 8 miles from us) we have put in place the necessary biosecurity measures on our farm. We have signs asking people not to walk on the footpath that crosses our farm and also footbaths of disinfectant at the entrance to the farm. We are also not allowing any vehicles onto our farm.
3rd July
Saffron's calf has finally been named; Liberty Domino.
26th June
So much has happened in the last 4 weeks... we now have 4 new calves. Liberty Daisy was the first born, followed by three boys, Liberty Darcy, Liberty Duke and Liberty D....we haven't yet decided! As you have probably guessed this is the year of names beginning with D! I have taken lots of photos of the young calves and I will be uploading them onto the website very soon.
P.S. I have now finished the article on BVD; once it has been published in the SE group newsletter, I will have it available on the website.
29th May
The breeding herd has now been vaccinated against BVD (bovine viral diarrhoea) and IBR (infectious bovine rhinotracheitis). This is so that we can hire Merlin to other Dexter breeders and not have the risk of him spreading these diseases to our herd or to other cows that he visits. I am currently writing an articl