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The ADCA Articles of Incorporation, an important document for the Association and its members, often remains unexplored territory for many in the ADCA. The document, which serves as the foundation of the Association, clearly outlines its purpose in Article III.
The first specified purpose is Article III, Item I: “Recording and preserving the pedigrees of Dexter cattle while maintaining the integrity of the breed.”
One might wonder how a breed association preserves the integrity of a breed. This essential question highlights the vital role of breed standards.
“Breed associations maintain the integrity of a breed by establishing and enforcing breed standards, keeping detailed pedigrees, conducting health screenings, and implementing strict registration requirements, ensuring that only animals conforming to the breed's defining characteristics can be officially registered and considered part of the purebred lineage.”[1],
The ADCA does only one of these components required to maintain breed integrity effectively, keep detailed pedigrees and strict registration requirements, and the other US registry relies upon the integrity of the ADCA registrations.
Maintaining a breed's integrity is impossible when there are no breed standards. Guidelines used as suggestions are not substitutes for established and enforced breed standards. The lack of standards becomes particularly acute in a breed where most owners are new to purebred livestock and cattle breeding. When Association membership is composed primarily of individuals with limited knowledge of cattle breeds and breed associations, who don’t know, let alone have internalized, the purpose of the Association, there are going to be some challenges.
One of the challenges our breed faces as a result is a loss of breed integrity as a genetic resource and the “Walmartization”[2] of the breed. In today’s U.S. Dexter purebred registered stock world, the Dexter is all types, looks, weights, heights, conformation, and breed uses are valid and justified so long as you pay $50 in dues, parent verify and submit registration with fees. The “Dexters are all things to all people for all purposes” route leads our breed off the cliff as a distinguishable breed. The seeming justification is that even if we careen off the cliff we're doing so full throttle with a full trailer load of members in train and rising registration numbers.
The fundamental understanding that a Breed Association’s primary duty is to protect and preserve the breed while improving within the breed standards is replaced with an entitlement mentality. This sense of entitlement is expressed that the breed association exists to serve the unique needs and purposes that "I" have established for "my" animals, and anything counter to that is anti-member (anti-me) and evidence elites and corrupt actors control the breed association.
The ”it’s about me,” not the breed mentality, became a pernicious and insidious factor in the ADCA shortly after the split in the early aughts when the Association split into two breed associations competing for limited members, and the mantra coast to coast was “Member Driven.” Now, 20 years later, the: member-driven, it’s about me, not the breed mindset is pervasive and ingrained, and there are still no breed standards for registration, and there is no Association will, it appears, to set the base expectations and standards to maintain the integrity of the breed. As a result, our breed may be growing, but it is not a healthy or sustainable growth as a uniquely identifiable breed and genetic resource.
Many “breeders” have come and gone and made coin on the “member-driven”, social-media Dexter flavor of the day. At times, our breed resembles more of a pyramid scheme than a cattle breed. We have those trying to increase carcass weights and rates of gains to rival standard beef breeds without concern for breed type or even the loosely specified guidelines. We have “breeders” registering cattle that seek guidance on social media on the most fundamental questions of breed type and quality, that are undeterred regardless of input, and register everything, even if referred to the guidelines. We have “breeders” intentionally disregarding fundamental aspects of the breed type and purpose, “…because I raise my cattle for ‘x’ purpose and I’m not going to be bothered with that and here is a registered PROVEN sire I’m offering for sale.’ We have “breeders” whose sole breeding model and marketing efforts are based upon three on/off genetic marker traits that are a part of no breed standards in the world or even the association guidelines.
Healthy, robust, and breed-improving cattle breed associations possess a universally shared member understanding and member knowledge that there is a precisely defined ideal breed type as stated by the breed standard, and we are all expected to aspire to that ideal and seek to produce animals closer to the standard than what we have heretofore. Without this shared breeder understanding, we produce a national herd of registered breeding stock of unremarkable, non-descript cattle that meet no specific genetic or production purpose and carry a piece of paper that is worthless as a marker of anything other than dues and registration fee submissions, and lineage from other non-descript cattle.
Individuals should breed what they want for whatever purposes, but if your purpose is to breed Dexter seed stock for registration, you must accept and breed to an ideal type and standard. If the association of your choice does not provide and enforce a standard, you can still function as a responsible and constructive breeder by self-imposing and self-enforcing a standard on your breeding and registrations. This is a powerful way to take control and ensure breed integrity within your herd.
Joining a cattle breed association and expecting the breed as represented in the Breed Association, which is responsible for maintaining the integrity of the breed, to adapt and accept your preferences for what the breed is and should be, is self-centered and demonstrates a lack of understanding of the responsibilities of a purebred livestock breeder. Yet this belief has proliferated within the American Dexter community and, unfortunately, even within the organization responsible for maintaining breed integrity. The breed is more important in the grand scheme of things than any individual or collection of breeders, and being a breeder means joining and being a part of something larger than yourself.
PS You might also note the requirement in the Articles of Incorporation Article III (v) that the ADCA is to provide and supervise a means of classifying Dexter cattle.
Breed Type Reproduces Breed Type
For breeds to be useful genetic packages, they must be genetically consistent enough to predictably reproduce themselves. Breeds breed true. The standard and the rules and regulations of the association should all be targeted toward the goal of assuring that the breed maintains its status as a consistent genetic package. Standards serve their breeds very poorly if they fail to define breed type, overall performance, or conformation adequately. Such loose standards result in the breed becoming too loosely defined to serve as a genetic resource.
Breed Standards
Breed standards are descriptions of breeds, and they are important tools in breed management and conservation. Standards straddle a delicate line between reflecting the actual animals within the breed, while also being a target to aim for as breeders strive for excellence.[i] (Sponenberg, 2007)
[2] Walmartization – catering to the least common denominator as a volume business model
[i] Managing Breeds for A Secure Future: Strategies for Breeders and Breed Associations by D. Phillip Sponenberg, & Bixby, D. E., 2007 Pittsboro North Carolina, The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.
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