George Humphrey didn’t set out to be a preservationist.
When he brought a few short, stout Dexter cattle home to Jefferson six years ago, he planned to sell their offspring to the local community of oxen teamsters who show the animals at agricultural fairs.
He still might if the herd ever produces a matching pair, but today he and his grown son Jory focus on a more elusive goal: producing rare red-colored calves.
The father-son team are part of a small community nationwide trying to preserve the red genetic line of traditional Dexter cattle, a heritage breed well-suited to homesteads and small farms. Getting one red calf is a game of odds that George Humphrey may never win in his lifetime, but the work is a chance to leave a legacy for generations of livestock across the country.
Dexters originated in southern Ireland and were recorded arriving in the United States in the early 1900s. The breed’s origins are murky, but Dexters are related to Kerry cattle.
In both countries, Dexters were fixtures on small farms. Today, about three-quarters of the people who contact the Humphreys about their animals are looking for a family milk cow.
As one of the last tri-purpose cattle breeds, Dexters can be used for meat, milk and draft power (like pulling a plow or cart). They are small, friendly, calve for up to 20 years with minimal difficulty, thrive on poor feed and are indifferent to most weather.
“It would be nice to see Dexters grow in general, because I think it seems, especially in Maine and New England, like the homesteading type self-sufficiency thing has grown a lot over the years,” George Humphrey said. “They’re perfect for that.”
The community in Maine is currently small; his breeding stock came from New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York.
Humphrey calls them thrifty cows — they’d be as happy foraging in the woods as they are eating hay. They produce good quality meat in manageable quantities and their milk has smaller fat globules than some other dairy cows, making it more digestible for the lactose intolerant.
Fully grown, they weigh less than 1,000 pounds and stand from 3 to 4 feet high. Most are black, some are brown, and a few — very few —- are red. Last year only six formally registered red calves were born in the country, according to Humphrey, although not all animals are registered.
After bringing his first few Dexters home, Humphrey did more research. He spoke with a retired NASA scientist in Virginia who brought red legacy Dexters back from the brink of extinction through years of complicated breeding maneuvers using frozen embryos and bull semen. With an hour-long phone call, scientist Gene Bowen converted him to the cause.
“If I’m going to do Dexters, why don’t we have a bigger purpose?,” Humphrey said he asked himself.
From then on, the family acquired animals with traditional genetic lines, which have horns and no genetics that are outside original bloodlines, rather than modernized, interbred ones. They breed naturally.
Today, about a dozen Dexters split their time between the Jefferson paddock and Jory Humphrey’s farm eight miles away, where he and his young family care for most of the animals in summer.
Though the Humphreys grew up around agriculture and raise chickens and goats, the Dexter project is their first venture into genetics at this level. When George Humphrey’s children were young, the family owned and operated the nearby general store; father and son now work in snack distribution.
Six years into their extracurricular project, no red calves have been born yet. This year the odds for the Humphrey calves were about 56 percent for black, 25 percent for red and 19 percent brown. Both are brown, but new generations carry the necessary recessive gene for red offspring.
Ultimately, George Humphrey hopes to produce a red bull with good genetics to be collected, stored and bred far into the future by breeders who use artificial insemination.
“That little piece of the project could go on for decades, even if I’m not involved,” he said. “They could look it up and see that it came out of Maine.”
