Heather Meadows Dexters - Arlington, Washington

USA

Raising Quality Registered Irish Dexter Cattle

Irish Dexter : The perfect cow for small acreage farms

The Irish Dexter Cattle are a rare breed raised for both beef and milk. They are small , making them easy on pastures, hardy, low maintenance, and having good temperments they are gentle and easy to handle. Known for being easy calvers they generally need no assistance calving. Dexters can have horns or be polled and can be black , red, or dun in color. Because Dexters are good foragers they economically turn grass and marginal scrubland into lean good quality beef and rich milk . With all their good qualities they have been growing in popularity as an old fashioned family cow.

We are a small family farm located east of Arlington next to the foot hills of the Mt. Baker

Snoqualmie National Forest. Here at Heather Meadows Dexter Farm we strive to farm

using sustainable methods in harmony with our enviornment. Our Dexters are raised all

natural in pastures with no hormones, antibiotics, chemical pesticides, or herbicides, believing

pastured, and grass fed they are truly healthier and happier. We handle our Dexters from birth

with care, haulter training and working with them for breeding and show. You can see the

gentleness and good temperment of Dexters as you walk among them out in the pasture, watching

them eagerly come up to you wanting brushed and petting. We milk a couple of our cows enjoying

the rich milk making creamy butter and good tasting cheese. Our grass fed and finished Dexter is

lean, tender, providing our customers with wholesome and great tasting beef.

We grow 3 different varieties of blueberries and apples, as well as other fruits such as peaches, pears,

cherries, and plums. From our garden we harvest vegetables grown naturally fresh picked in season

using our own composted manure for fertilizer.

Roxanne had our first calf of 2011 Me (Barb) with HM's Raven. He already likes his chin scratched.

Thistle with her new heifer calf.

Sheenagh's first steps. Born March 28th

at 6:35 PM. Raven now has a playmate.

Clover is next to calve. She is due around the 3rd week of May. We are hoping for a polled heifer that is dun. A tall order, but she was bred with a polled bull who carries dun. It is an exciting time of year as we watch to see what God will bless us with each year.

Raven is checking out his new sister. Llanfair's Ramsie

is the sire to both. Both mom's are keeping a

close watch, they are such great moms.

It is interesting Ramsie carries red and so do

Roxanne and Thistle, but this year we got black

calves. You just never know what God will do.

Last year Roxanne had a black heifer,

but the year before she had a red bull calf.

Last year Thistle had a red bull calf and this

year a black heifer.

A friend had a female duck taken by a hawk so she offered to give us 2 of her boys who needed a new home, and since we have a nice pond "the Boys" have moved in. I built a pen to get them use to their new home and then after a week or so we gave them the run of our farm and now they go to bed in their house inside the pen with no problem each evening. I'm allergic to chicken eggs, but have no problem with duck eggs and Sam, the dark one, and Timmy needed mates so we now have 7 baby Khaki Campbells. I hope at least 2-3 are females.

Our new ducklings

Clover's calf arrived May 23rd at 9:18 am. He is beautiful strong and healthy. It will be exciting to see if he will be polled. As you can see he is black. God does not always give us what we want, but what we need. We are blessed that he is healthy and strong, that is the most important thing.

He was up nursing within 10 minutes.

It is always fun to watch them trying to figure out how the legs work and see them rabbit hopping aroung. By tomorrow he will think he owns the whole pasture!

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