GUERNSEY CATTLE

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 246, 7 January 1928, Page 23

GUERNSEY CATTLE

A HARDY BREED BREED’S PROGRESS IN U.S.A. The Guernsey is an offshoot of the Normandy breed, and is larger, stronger-boned, and coarser in appearance than the Jersey. It has not been bred with such care, and its outlines are not so regular or symmetrical. The largest cows belonging to the original old-fashioned type are to be found on the west of the island. The climate of Guernsey, with its northerly aspect, is not so genial as that of Jersey, with its sunny southern exposure, and consequently the cattle are hardier and more inured to cold on their arrival in England than those from Jersey. The latter, it is true, become acclimatised in a few years, and their descendants retain their hardiness, but they also lose the refined delicacy of skin and form, and become stronger in frame, and altogether coarser. Some strains of island-bred cattle in high condition are too broad at the withers, but on their losing condition as a result of heavy milking the shoulder top becomes sharp, as it ought to be. Apart from these, poor-milking cows of a beefy type sometimes occur, and should be discarded for breeding purposes. Young animals are not too highly fed in their native land, which would tend to make them heavy and coarse, but the calves are made to follow the cows to pasture to clean up vrtiat the cows reject. The Guernsey has made great progress in the United States of America, into which country it was introduced in the nineteenth century. It was not, however, until 1893, when the dairy qualities of the breed were brought under notice by records made at the World’s Columbian Exhibition at Chicago, that Guernsey interests began to expand to the extent they deserved. The American Guernsey Cattle Club was organised in 1877, and of later years many importations of Guernsey cattle have been made, and much enthusiasm has been aroused on the part of dairymen in exploiting and developing the breed. The Guernsey ranks at the present time as one of the most popular breeds of dairy cattle.