The Jersey Herd Book, a registry of the Island’s pedigree cows, was started on Saturday 3 March 1866 by the Royal Jersey Agricultural and Horticultural Society.
It is regarded as one of the most important innovations in the history of local farming.
Thanks to meticulous record-keeping since then, which has guaranteed the provenance and pedigree of the breed, the Jersey cow is now the second-largest dairy breed in the world, with a population of more than four million in 100 countries – and the lineage of each of those animals can be traced, along the male and female bloodlines, to the Island farm it originated from as recorded in the Herd Book.
See this weekend’s JEP for the story of the Jersey Herd Book.
