Farm of the Week: Dexter breed that’s stealing the show

One turning point was being declared ‘world champion’ leek grower at Ashington, Northumberland, in 1988. That year, he earned an astonishing £7,000 in prize money for leeks, invested in five top Texel ewes and bred a ram which became champion at the Great Yorkshire Show and the Royal Highland before selling for 4,000 guineas.

He grew up at Gainford, between Darlington and Barnard Castle. His dad was a stockman on a dairy farm but died young. Mr Hunt was helping on farms from the age of six and was running livestock on borrowed and rented land when he left school at 15.

He kept going that way into his 20s, while he looked for a break as a tenant. Eventually, he bought a bungalow, got married and took a job with the water board in the Tees Valley. He did quite well at that, too, but it all came to an end because he was running sheep on the board’s spare corners of grassland and a manager who had approved the arrangement denied everything when somebody ordered an inquiry.

Mr Hunt went into selling feeds but continued to dream of running his Texels on his own land.

In 2001, he raised a mortgage on 20 acres at Sowerby, near Thirsk, and started taking in pigs for bed and breakfast. He built two pig houses, with capacity for a thousand in each, and has been covering the mortgage ever since by fattening baconers for Malton.

A few years before he finally became a landowner, however, there had been another turning point, when his son, Sam, was six years old and heartbroken at the loss of a guinea pig. Mr Hunt promised him a replacement pet from the North Yorkshire Show and the boy fell for a Dexter heifer.

“Luckily, my Texels had done well and I was in a good mood,” his dad recalls. That was 15 years ago. And gradually, Dexters became his principal interest. They always were a smallholder’s cattle – small, tough and versatile – and with hobby farming on the up, they have become quite common. But most breeders are running a handful or two, and trying to breed them pygmy-style for show purposes.

Mr Hunt has become a formidable competitor on the show circuit. But he is also now making some serious income out of Dexter beef.

He has about 80 breeding cows and takes 24-30 months to fatten those set aside for beef, meaning he has around 200 at any one time – plus access to spares bred by his bloodstock customers. Most of the cattle, along with an interesting mix of sheep and pigs, live at Carlshead Farm, Sicklinghall, between Harrogate and Wetherby, on land rented from Robin Gaunt and his son, Gareth, who have diversified into an education and therapy business.

Mr Hunt is now 52 and Sam is 21 and a college graduate. Between the two sites, they run up to 2,500 pigs, 440 ewes and their followers and the Dexters.

Graham Hunt takes a bit of time out to show Dexters, all over the country, and already this year has too many wins for the space available. To cut a long story short, he has had the breed society Bull of the Year five times since 2004 and Herd of the Year in 2007. Breeding stock is an important part of his business. But he is also now selling around a hundred Dexters a year as meat, for £750-£1,000 for 180-240 kilos deadweight. At that price, he does not have to lie awake at night counting his input costs and can afford to let the cattle mature slowly and give half the meat of a standard commercial cross.

The Sicklinghall farm butts up against the rather nice Wood Hall Hotel & Spa. And a former chef there, Norman Mackenzie, came out one day and introduced himself as a fan of Dexters. He later took some of the farm’s meat to the Yorkshire Show and wiped the floor with an Aberdeen Angus team – we are assured – in a cook-off and tasting test.

Dexter ribeyes at £25 and sirloin steaks at £28 are now an institution on the menu at the hotel, which buys one or two whole carcases a month. Manager Charles Merchie says his chefs have always got a casserole they want to try and room service and barbecue nights keep up a steady demand for burgers, so there is no waste. He says: “We wanted something local and you could not ask for fewer food miles. We wanted a quality beef different from Angus. And we wanted a meat which would take ageing for at least 24 days, which is a waste of time with some.”

The beef Dexters are surprisingly varied. Show Dexters are almost invariably short-legged and black. But there is a long-legged strain, which is better for beef. And they do come in red and dun.

The Shambles Butchers, in York, is another customer and Mr Hunt has just shaken hands on a deal to supply Johnson’s of Thirsk. And there are always buyers for London and Ireland to turn to as required.

In the interests of the meat, and the preferences of the market, the Dexters are fed almost entirely on grass and home-grown haylage, although they get a bit of barley for the last month of fattening. They also, incidentally, get a supplement called Liquithrive, for which Mr Hunt is a part-time sales rep. He reckons it is the best way of compensating for trace-element deficiencies which, he says, are a common cause of fertility problems. He gives it to the sheep, too.

He uses Texels to tup the ewes, which used to be mainly Lleyns. But the Lleyns are a little over-prolific on these lowland pastures. Ever since he got here, Mr Hunt has gone to Dolgellau once a year to buy a couple of hundred Beulahs classed as ‘broken-mouthed’ – meaning they no longer have the teeth for hill grazing but still have a lambing left in them in softer conditions. He gets them for £42 a head and can sell them to the knacker for £40 after an average of one and a half lambs each. He has crossed some with a Welsh Leicester to make Welsh Mules for further breeding and is also now experimenting with Zwartble tups.

Meanwhile, he is running a few free-range pigs in a walled wood belonging to another neighbour. He uses ‘Iron Age’ sows, bred by crossing a Tamworth and a Wild Boar, and hires a Gloucester Old Spot to father pigs which make a chef’s eye light up. With those and the Dexters to draw on, he has an eye on the possibility of a boxed meat service. He is open to inquiries about that and meanwhile can still find a Dexter or a pig for new customers. Call 07828 915234.