our dexter beef

If your curiosity has led you to this site, we assume that you know something about the merits of the beef that a dexter carcass will produce and whose virtues we will extol later on, but before doing so, you might like to know a bit about our herd and why the steak that ends up on your table tastes so plate wipingly good.

 Five years ago we started to run a herd of fifty dexter cows along with our commercial suckler herd and within days we realised that we were dealing with a small cow with a lot of attitude. From the very first day, having watched them clear a wire fence with greater aplomb than Steve McQueen on a motorbike in The Great Escape, it became clear that it was the dexters and not us who were going to decide how they were going to be raised!

Despite erecting fences that would keep back a migrating herd of elephants, the matriarchs in the herd decided that they were going to be grass fed, woodland grazing, fen munching, river swimming, bog snorkelling , out wintering cattle and from time to time would agree to move in the general direction that we wanted them to move in.

To move them, they refused to be driven and on so doing they would scatter faster than a band of renegade apaches in a John Wayne movie, but were quite happy to follow once they became used to you.

In contrast to the tenderness of the meat, they are a compact, tough, inquisitive little cow who will calve out in the field quite happily with the calf up and sucking in a few minutes and who are then slow grown over the next  thirty to thirty six months ready for your freezer.

Over the five years we have come to an accommodation. They graze our three hundred year old parkland until their taste buds crave something different, at which point they wait till a Saturday night, Christmas Day, Easter Sunday or the middle of lambing before upping sticks and moving themselves to another part of the estate.

There are those who would call this sustainable, ethical farming but we have not got time to worry about that. It is just the way it is! 

Apart from the forequarter, our carcasses are hung for 28 days before being butchered, which on top of the taste bud grappling nature that dexter beef naturally has, provides cuts that are much darker and with more streaks of marbling  throughout than most people are accustomed to seeing in their beef. It is at this point, before the meat even sees an oven, saucepan, frying pan, grill, barbeque, open fire or flesh eating zombie that you know you are in for a taste extravaganza.

However, when confronted with the choice of an entire carcass to eat, it is difficult to know where to start when purchasing our beef and using the analogy that it is best to eat an elephant one mouthful at a time, we sell a selection box of dexter beef or individual cuts that you can pick and choose if your tastes are more specific.

2 x 450g mince 

2 x  sirloin steaks (460g)

2 x 500g stewing steak

8 x 110g burgers

2 x chump steak (700g)

2 x stewing steak (500g)

2 x 450g sausages