Glenn Land Farm Dexters are raised on irrigated pasture in the northern end of the Sacramento valley. We use pasture rotation and intensive grazing to improve the pasture quality and cut down on parasite loads. The cattle are usually moved to fresh pasture daily. Our pastures are mostly ryegrass, Dallas grass, fescue, white clover, tonic plantain and puna chicory. We use high tensile wire electric fence for the perimeter and poly tape and plastic posts for cross fencing pastures.

Heifers are bred at 13 to 15 months of age to calve at about two years. Dexters reach puberty at a very early age and breed back very soon after calving. These traits make good management important in weaning heifer calves early and monitoring the condition of the cattle carefully. Dexter cows produce lots of milk and calve easily. Dexter bulls are being used in beef and dairy herds as first calf heifer bulls to insure easy calving. Dexter cows are also used in other parts of the world to raise extra calves. We also get many inquiries on Dexter cows as milk cows. They are an excellent family milk cow as they produce 1.5 to 2 gallons of rich milk daily.

We have built up a clientele of buyers for our steer carcasses and have run groups of steers through the Chico State fed steer and heifer evaluation and collected average daily gain, feed conversion and carcass data. Dexters have an excellent carcass for family home consumption. The meat is very tender, fine grained and the meat produced per carcass is the right amount for most families. Our calves are fed out on grass and slaughtered at 14 to 16 months of age which results in a very tender but low fat product. Lambs and goat kids are grown naturally on high quality irrigated pasture using intensive grazing management. Many of our lambs are sold to upscale restaurants and supermarkets in the California wine country. We lamb and kid to take advantage of the natural pasture season and fill a niche market in the fall. The demand for our White Dorper rams has been very high due to breeders wanting to eliminate shearing and those interested in the grass fed market for their lambs.