The Jerseys

I sometimes wish all cows were Jerseys, small, gentle, doe-eyed creatures you could push around without any trouble, with padded corners and fragile limps. Even if they kicked you it was like a love tap compared to a clump from a craggy Friesland. ~ James Herriot

The Jersey is the smallest of all dairy breeds; an exquisite, dainty little cow. They originate from the isle of Jersey, and as a result they can withstand the cold and wet surprisingly well for such diminutive creatures. On the other hand they easily get heat stress.

Jerseys are not known for especially high production, but their butterfat is the highest of the dairy breeds. This means that their milk is thick and yellow and very creamy with a round taste. They are known for a gentle, inquisitive temperament, great fertility and calving ease; their calves are born small, but grow rapidly. Our smallest calf ever was born too early and weighed 13 kilograms, but our ordinary calves weigh about 30-35 kilograms.

Jersey bulls are very fiesty animals and can be horrific to have around. Another Jersey disadvantage is that the older cows are very prone to "milk fever", a calcium deficiency that can kill a cow in half an hour.

They are easier to maintain than the bigger breeds, and as a result of their quiet natures and small size, there are less damages to farm equipment when Jerseys are milked. They need less feed and less space than bigger breeds. They come in all shades of brown, fawn, chestnut, grey, and any of these colours with white; usually Jerseys have black points, but brindle, black, black-and-white, and white are not allowed; also brown patches on a white coat is undesireable.

Of course here at Hydeaway we think Jerseys are absolutely marvellous and there's no two ways about it; we love their beauty, their stature, their daintiness.

Our Jerseys

Our young bull, Prospect Lancelot's King Arthur          Our older bull, Leon-Thom Rocket Moonshot

We are the proud owners of more than a hundred purebred and registered Jerseys. The majority of the herd is registered as XF, which means that they do qualify for purebred Jerseys but their ancestry is unknown, and therefore they may not be entered in a Breed show.

Our herd is mostly made up of the descendents of our first cows; it is a "closed" herd, which means we do not buy any more animals except for the routine circulation of bulls. We bought our first registered animals a few years ago from Elavicki Jerseys just down the road and we set about improving our herd. Since we are mainly commercial (that is, we sell milk to make money instead of animals) we breed firstly for milk production and then for looks. Our first cows would not have done very well in the show ring up against the trim glories of the Jersey breed, but my goodness, they could produce milk all right. Our top cows come from that first herd; several are the original animals.

Our first bull, Polo, was not much of a bull at all. Our first cow Princess refused to become pregnant from artificial insemination (AI), but her daughter Peanut "took" (conceived) at once and produced a small bullcalf who quickly grew into a large bull. The inbred daughter of Princess and Polo was the first calf born on our new farm, Hydeaway. Her name was Pinki.

Next we bought a slightly better old chap named Hansie, who had a magnificent temperament and was much loved on the farm. He was not registered and his calves aren't much to look at, but they have the kindest, sweetest natures you can imagine.

The third bull, Frikkie, was not registered but his parents were, so he could have been registered as a Studbook Proper. His calves were much better and gave more milk.

Then we took another step in the right direction and bought a good quality registered bull named Haystack Mo Jake. Jake was a bit of a pest - okay, a lot of a pest. He was the most aggressive beast ever to lay hoof or paw to Hydeaway ground. He chased people over fences, tossed Jon Hyde to the ground and pitched an unwise worker headfirst into a brimming water trough (I never said the incidents weren’t as funny as they were scary). His calves, too, were worse than Frikkie's; their legs and feet weren't excellent and their milk production was low. Fingers crossed that his daughters will have tremendous longevity.

At last we bought a beautiful bull named Leon-Thom Rocket Moonshot. His daughters are beautiful and none have come into lactation yet, but he will definitely do much better than Jake. And he is not nearly so aggressive. Samurai, our big black ox, took care of THAT.

The herd comes home

Currently we have an average of sixty cows in milk. In winter our parlour average is a lowly ten litres, producing six hundred litres daily; but at the height of summer our average can reach seventeen litres and often we produce almost a thousand litres daily. We haven't taken part in Breed shows yet but at the youth shows our calves do well. We are about to start artificially inseminating our cows instead of using bulls, which will advance the genetic progress of our herd; though we have tried to AI some cows. The semen was too old, we found out later, and only two out of eight "took", producing one beautiful little heifer named March - her sire was Blair - and a funny little ox named Brosty, by Frosty. March's daughter, Hydeaway Mystic Melody, has plenty of potential.

Here of course every beast has a name. You can't look into those liquid brown eyes and then give them a number. Our cows have got numbers because many companies will not accept name lists, but we use names as a method of identification. You can't number people, so we won't number cows. We can't actually grasp the concept of numbers very well. Each one of our Jerseys and Jersey crossbreds have names. Some are rather nasty names, admittedly, ranging from a swearword (when it's a dratted bullcalf and we've been hoping for a heifer, the best cow in the parlour is ill, you've just stubbed your toe and now it's a darn bull) to names like Mystic Melody and the memorable show calves, Blodwynn and Bronwen.

You cannot number a Jersey.