During the Second World War, Beryl Rutherford, a young woman from suburban London, joined the Women's Land Army and found herself working on a dairy farm. Later in the 1940s, she obtained a job on a farm which happened to contain the Raby herd of Dexters. Beryl was charmed by the breed and in 1951 bought her first Dexter, Canada Owl of Parndon. Her first Dexter calf was born amidst fireworks and bonfires on 5 November - Guy Fawkes Day - that year.

Shortly after, Beryl purchased a cow and heifer, descendents of Raby herd stock - Balksbury Marjoram and Balksbury Rosemary 2nd - and it is from this line that the Woodmagic herd has primarily developed. At this early stage, Beryl was also relief milking for the Pigeons and Pentre Hobyn herds, and she acquired Pigeons Barberry as her first bull. Barberry's dam, Elysian Conqueror's Witch, was a small beefy cow who was also a great milker. As her Dexter herd grew, so Beryl moved to her own farmland, eventually ending up at Bunksland, 54 acres in mid-Devon. She developed a commercial dairy herd of around 40 Dexter milkers.

In 1967, five out of six of Beryl's autumn calvers produced bulldog calves. This problem threatened the breed's viability, especially its commercial usefulness. Beryl loved the short-leg animals but was also unhappy that half of their offspring looked nothing like them, having long legs. The Dexter Cattle Society was experimenting with the introduction of genes from other breeds. Beryl decided to take another path - to take the longer-legged purebred Dexters that did not produce bulldog calves and breed them to produce a consistently small and compact version which did not carry the dwarf gene.

In the late 1960s, she hit on the breeding policy to achieve this. After her years of experience with Dexter breeding, she could tell that one of her best cows, Woodmagic Mudstopper, was not a bulldog calf breeder. Her policy was to breed mainly from her. Mudstopper's first two sons, Woodmagic Dormouse and Mink, also proved not to be carriers of the bulldog gene so they were used on their own mother and other Woodmagic cows. Mudstopper was always bred back to her own sons, an in-breeding policy. As a result, bulldog calves became a thing of the past for this herd. There were no short-legged Dexters, which are sometimes prone to severe arthritis when 8 or 9 years old, but a herd of consistently small and compact character has been developed. Both black and dun cattle are produced, though red was bred out of the herd at an early stage when Beryl was concentrating on eliminating the bulldog gene.

In her breeding programme, Beryl has also put great emphasis on temperament, especially of bulls. For a significant part of her life, she was running a Dexter dairy operation by herself. This meant it was essential that her cattle should be quiet and easy to handle. Whenever deciding upon a bull to rear, she looked particularly carefully at the temperament the bull calf exhibited at weaning. His disposition could potentially change when he became sexually mature, of course, but Beryl found that most of her bulls remained quiet and tractable.

In 1971, Beryl invited members of the Dexter Cattle Society to visit her herd and she set out her breeding policy. These two photos show Woodmagic Mudstopper (left photo, with a yellow "1" on her) and her full sister, Woodmagic Mallemuck (right photo, with a yellow "2" on her), who carried the bulldog gene.

Beryl has been an innovative and experimental breeder, making bold decisions and always seeking to test her achievements in practical ways. In the mid-1980s, she borrowed a short-leg bull and put it across all her cows, many of whom were as small as some short-leg Dexters - any resulting bulldog calf would disprove her belief that she had managed to eradicate the bulldog gene from her herd. Half of the resulting calves were short-leg, half were long-leg, none were bulldog calves. When Woodmagic Mink was made available through AI, Beryl guaranteed to replace any bulldog calf that he sired with a live heifer calf. She never had to replace any of his offspring, and recent testing of his semen from the UK Long Term Bank proved his genetic status.

There has been gradual acceptance of the quality of Woodmagic cattle. Members of the herd and their offspring have become popular in the UK. One analysis of the 747 full pedigree registered females in the 1982 UK Dexter Herdbook showed that 46% came from the Woodmagic line. Recent research on the UK Dexter Herdbook since 1970 has shown that it is possible to reduce the breed to as few as 8 families being the descendants of 7 high profile bulls and one cow, the latter being Woodmagic Mudstopper. The influence of Mudstopper in the UK Dexter herd is profound. Extensive exports of the Woodmagic line has also been made to many countries, especially Canada and Denmark. Beryl has been able to fulfil a longstanding burning ambition by sending some Woodmagic animals back to their native home in Ireland. Below is a photo, taken in Ireland in late 2004, of Woodmagic Mallemuck 4th with her calf Hillhead Jade.

Beryl has been active in the Dexter Cattle Society, serving as its President in 1994-1995 and on its Council for many years. But it is her life on her farm with her Dexters that she has particularly valued. The most fitting end to this story is to repeat Beryl's closing words from the account of her story in Ted Neal's book, The Life and Times of Dexters (1992, page 44): 

"I still experience the following in my present herd - the exasperated delight in the small calf that dives past the open door through which I had hoped to drive it, as it turns to look at me with a mixture of mischief and triumph;  the sense of fun and excitement as the entire herd takes off spontaneously at full gallop in a zest for living on a sunny day; and the undemanding friendship of the older animal. I still value their ability to thrive and produce where a less primitive breed would fail. It is the same Dexter to which I have always remained faithful and which has given me so much pleasure and fun over the years."

On to The Source of the Woodmagic Name

On to Pedigree of Woodmagic Mudstopper

Back to Woodmagic Dexter Cattle Stud