Our new Mini Dexters | Page 21 | Animals | Forums

You going to do the pizza layout?

On phone right now. When I get on my laptop later I have some ideas for you.

That amount of land would be perfect for 2 of them, a full size requires 1 to 1.5 acres for grazing so the miniatures are much less. We paid $350 apiece for ours which is a steal from what I have seen for other prices online.

What are thinking for fencing? They can be ran on electric if they have been trained on it but the cedar fence posts have worked out really well for us. 

If you don't want to use the full space or want to save on fencing material I would look at going with a circular pasture. Let's say that spot is exactly 4 acres so it would be roughly 418x418 feet. That would give you a perimeter of 1672. If you went with a circular pasture in the same spot you would have a perimeter of 1313 feet with an area fenced in of 3.15 acres which is still plenty big for 2 of them.

If you are seeing the prices that I am on a lot of breeders sites for upward of $2000 for a calf another option might be to just get a regular breed. Or just make a roadtrip to Maine.

A miniature will end up around 700 pounds while a regular breed will be around 1200 pounds in 2 years. You could just keep the regular till it hit's the miniatures full size weight and take them to slaughter. The regular will eat more and require more water but the initial purchase price should be significantly cheaper than the minis and should offset those costs greatly. 

Minis are much easier to handle though.

One downside with the minis is the amount of inline breeding that goes on with them. I know a lot of animals are inbred but depending on the breeder and how they handle their breeding program you could possibly end up with a calve with less than desirable traits. Our breeder is the only one that I know of in the area and he keeps pretty meticulous records of his breeding to make sure that he doesn't cross the line more than once and I believe he imports bull semen to add new genetics to his herd. But, polo seen here on the right.

Is definitely smaller and seems a little "off". Nothing too bad but there is a marked difference between him and his brother Marco. Marco never makes a sound, he just roams around, eats and comes up to get a carrot every now and then. Polo will just stare at a tree and moo, he is also very skittish and not as personable as his brother.

Is it the breeding? I don't know, it might just be his natural disposition, but it is something to think about.