Original Article 2: "When is a Dexter not a Dexter?"

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"When is a Dexter Not a Dexter"
by Beverley McCulloch
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Originally published in "Dexter Dispatch", No. 46, December 2004, pages 14-15 ("Dexter Dispatch" is the Bulletin of the Dexter Cattle Society of New Zealand - the DCSNZ website is http://www.dexter-cattle.co.nz/)
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Beverley McCulloch was a retired scientist who used to work for the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand. She died in March 2006, just two years after writingthis article. She wrote a wide range of articles on Dexters, rare breeds conservation, and smallfarming, and undertook editing and website development for a number of groups, notably the Rare Breeds Conservation Society of New Zealand. In all these activities, she worked alongside her husband, Michael Trotter. Together, they operated Summer Wine Dexter stud on 10 acres in North Canterbury. See their website, Summer Wine Dun Dexters http://www.dundexters.co.nz/.
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~~ Start of Article ~~
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Once upon a time (well, a couple of hundred years ago anyway) there was a relic population of “black Celtic cattle” (hardy animals and good milkers), which had survived among the cottagers of south-western Ireland – principally in County Kerry. As with most livestock breeds of that time they were known by the name of their place of origin as Kerry Cattle.
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At some time in their history – and how far back this occurred is not known – a genetic mutation occurred in the Kerry population which resulted in a percentage of calves being born with a form of dwarfism (very similar to the achondroplastic dwarfism that occurs in humans). These dwarfed animals had short legs and relatively large heads on normal-sized – if rather heavy – bodies. Both the ‘normal’ Kerries and the dwarfed form were equally useful for milk or meat – it was, after all, really only the shorties’ legs that were markedly affected.
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The local population soon realized that there were now some rules required in the breeding of these cattle. The basic one was to never breed a short-legged animal to another short-legged type. If you did, you apparently concentrated the dwarfism effect and the result was often a much-deformed calf that was born dead. Their solution was simply to make sure you always bred a short-leg to a long-leg – this way you were almost always safe – as of course you were when breeding long-legs together.
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And so they continued happily breeding these two physical forms of the Kerry cattle until some time in the Victorian era, some bright spark of an Englishman decided that the stumpy variety of Kerry was kind of cute, and further decided that it perhaps would be a good idea to declare it a separate variety. The name “Dexter” was adopted, but, at least initially, breeders had the sense to keep all the animals, regardless of leg length, in the same Herd Book. The tall ones continued to be called Kerries, and the shorties were termed Dexter-Kerries. Each form could still be bred indiscriminately with the other.
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Trouble first arose with the decision to declare the ‘Dexter’ and the ‘Kerry’ two separate breeds and put them into two separate Herd Books. That was fine for the Kerry, but for the Dexter it created a nonsensical situation whereby to maintain the Dexter breed either a high percentage of deformed or “bulldog” calves had to be accepted (i.e. breeding short-leg to short-leg) or the short-legged Dexters had to be cross-bred with long-legged Kerries – these being now a different breed.
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The resolution to this problem was that the long-legged animals to which any of the short-legged Dexters were bred became referred to (quite ridiculously) as long-legged Dexters. There could, of course, be no such thing – a Dexter was short-legged by definition! A long-legged ‘Dexter’ was identical with a Kerry – in fact it was a Kerry.
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That situation has remained with us to the present day, but it has recently been compounded by two developments.
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The first is that for some years there has been a selection for small size in the Dexter breed which is not brought about by dwarfism (now known as chondrodysplasia) – in other words, we now have a lot of small, long-legged Dexters – far smaller than the original Kerry.
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The second, and much more important, has been the isolation of the gene that causes chondrodysplasia in Dexters and the development of a testing programme which will identify affected animals. The potential is now there to develop a chondrodysplasia-free breed.
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It is my contention that we will soon no longer have Dexters as the breed was historically defined. Remember, a Dexter was a dwarfed form derived from the Kerry breed of cattle, and characterized by its short legs and relatively heavier bone.
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For a long time Dexter breeders have proudly advertised their animals as the smallest British cattle – pointing out smugly that they were ‘naturally’ small and not just a miniature version of a larger breed. The way things are progressing, the time is coming when the Dexter as it has been known for hundreds of years will no longer be with us. Instead we will have only a breed of miniature Kerries.
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And that’s the long and the short of it. (Except that you can all sit down and start writing letters to the Editor, telling me why I’m wrong!)
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