A Modest Proposal for the Preservation and Improvement of Dexter Cattle *

SMD Paycheck Ballan and his boys (steers) at attention: The cattle behind the satire. Stewardship is measured in reality, not lab results.

It is a melancholy object, after a quarter-century among these cattle, to watch how quickly we forget what they are for. At every meeting, in every corner of the internet, the same pattern repeats: mention a new test, a new marker, a newly identified shade of color, and the room leans forward as if salvation had arrived by carrier pigeon from California. Feet, udders, capacity, the hard work of husbandry, vanish into the background. The only question that seems to matter is: “Where can I test for it?”

It is a sickening spectacle as well to walk among Dexter breeders in the field, fairground or Facebook group and see the earnestness with which they squander themselves upon matters of such dubious consequence. Wherever a new variant is named, whether of color or the 57^th variety of milk protein, there is at once a great stir. One would think, from the eagerness of the questioning, that the survival of the breed hinged upon whether a certain shade of brown might be certified by a university laboratory supporting the work of a herd of graduate students.

I think it can be easily shown by the product that this excessive concern for cosmetics and panels, none of which are built on Dexter data, has bred something other than cattle. It has diverted attention from the hard and necessary labor of weighing calves, judging feet and udders, and mating stock for the dual purposes our standard prescribes. Every year, animals sound in form and useful in function are culled, while others are retained on the sole strength of an alphanumeric code printed on a page. If this be progress, it is progress toward ruin.

But as to my own part, having for many years watched this spectacle, and seeing little hope that sober argument will prevail against the appetite for novelty, I shall now humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

I propose, for the preservation and improvement of the Dexter breed, that we cease altogether from breeding actual cattle. Instead, let us construct and venerate the UC–Davis Dexter.

The UC-Davis Dexter cow will be a 21st-century marvel. Hornless, because the printout says so. Red or dun in every preferred shade on command, depending on the fashion of the week. She will test A2 at every locus and carry each novel variant as it appears for the more viable production of cheeses never made.

She will never trouble us with questions of calving ease or udder suspension, for she need not calve at all. For the UC-Davis Dexter cow is only printed on paper, laminated, however, and she can be mounted in the show ring and admired without the inconvenience of manure or mastitis.

She will carry every marker ever discovered in some breed a thousand miles away on the cattle genome and a century or more removed from the breed’s purpose.  She need not milk; she need not raise a calf; she need not stand past her third lactation. She need only test well. Her udder may be flat as a shelf or split asunder; her feet may point east and west; her body may betray the dual-purpose balance our standard demands. None of it will matter, so long as the panel proclaims her validated. She will be perfect… on paper.

The advantages are obvious. Breeders will be spared the tedium of bending to inspect a pastern or measuring rib and hip. No more muddy boots, no more cold nights in the calving barn, no more intense discussions about teats or toplines. No more hot afternoons weighing calves or hard decisions regarding which heifers to retain. Think of the savings. No need of pasture, no feed bills, no fencing, only the cost of postage and a credit card on file. You can run a 1,000 UC–Davis Test Dexters on a ¼ acre downtown lot! A lock of hair, a check in the mail, and the results will descend from the laboratory like tablets from Mount Sinai. Most comforting of all, the UC–Davis Test Dexter will decide for us which cattle must go, sparing us the tedious drudgery of independent judgment required to select and cull a herd.

Indeed, we already see the joy with which such revelations are received. A calf is born in the barnyard, unproven, unfinished, waiting to show what it will be. And when the envelope arrives, or the email pings, and the parcel post delivers its verdict, there is rejoicing: the calf is now proven by codes on a piece of paper. Its worth is not in structure or thrift or promise of dual-purpose production, but in a code transcribed at a distance. The breeder beams not at the calf itself, but at the printout. This is the liturgy of the UC–Davis Test Dexter.

She will be eternally young, eternally correct by definition, for the certificate will attest to it. She will unify the breed, for she will be any color desired. She will enrich the laboratories, whose assays will be traded like indulgences, and she will gratify all those who have long preferred the excitement of fashion to the discipline, rigor, and restraint of breed stewardship.

I can think of no one objection that will possibly be raised against this proposal, unless it be urged that the UC Davis Test Dexter, being a creature of paper and codes, produces neither milk nor beef. But what of that? If the measure of a Dexter is no longer her yield, her thrift, her durability, or her form, then what need have we of milk or beef?

I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in promoting this necessary scheme, having no UC-Davis Test Dexter myself to dispose of, and no expectation of profit from those who may. My aim is only the public good of the Dexter breed, the advancement of science, and the relief of breeders from the rough duty of making judgments with their own knowledge and eyes.

—

Here I set aside the mask. Satire serves its purpose, but the truth is plainer. Silver Maple Dexters declines, with extreme prejudice, the UC-Davis Test Dexter. We decline the cult of color, the fetish of milk proteins, and the counterfeit authority of panels devised for other breeds. We will not cull or keep a Dexter on the say-so of a laboratory assay that has never seen, let alone measured, the cattle we are charged to steward.

For some who have already imbibed at the bar of test idolatry, this will come as hard medicine. Stewardship was never meant to be easy. For those of you new to the breed, take this counsel: do not be taken in by the UC-Davis Test Cow.  She is a barren mistress. Do not be lured or deceived into thinking that novelty is progress, or that cattle excellence can be divined from the printout of a polymerase chain reaction. That road leads nowhere worth going.

We will support research that strengthens the breed as a breed: compact, thrifty cattle, sound in structure, fertile, steady, and balanced in milk and beef. We will contribute to work on inbreeding and outcrossing, on functional traits that matter for the survival and proliferation of a dual-purpose breed. But we will not surrender the definition of Dexter excellence to a laboratory printout.

The temptation to fracture into echo chambers is strong; the breed is small, and faction is easier than husbandry. The breeder’s task is harder. It is to resist that pull, to stand whole against fashion, and to breed forward: stacking quality upon quality in the cattle themselves, resisting the flimsy enthusiasms of the tail-hair enthusiasts.

If others must have their UC-Davis Dexter, let them build her of paper alleles and set her up on the filing cabinet in the corner of the office. We will be outside, measuring real cows, doing the work of the breed steward.

—Jeff M. Chambers

Silver Maple Dexters

www.silvermapledexters.com • facebook.com/SilverMapleDexters

* This essay borrows its frame from Jonathan Swift’s 1729 satire “A Modest Proposal,” in which Swift, with deliberate irony, suggested that impoverished Irish families might ease their burdens by selling their children as food. The point was not the proposal itself but the grotesque exaggeration, meant to expose the cruelty of fashionable “solutions.” In the same spirit, the “UC–Davis Test Dexter” is a satirical construct, used here to critique the misplaced obsession with tests and cosmetic markers in Dexter breeding.

Note: This essay appears on the SMD Blog as a standalone satire in the Swiftian tradition. It is not part of the Breeding Forward Series, which continues separately as our structured essay program on breed stewardship and improvement.