It is a question that comes up periodically – the last time in successive votes of the Royal Jersey Agricultural and Horticultural Society and the States in the 1980s, when proposals to allow the importation of genetic material were defeated.Tonight the RJAHS membership will receive a report commissioned by the society from the geneticist Maurice Bichard on the sustainable development of the Island’s dairy cattle.Society president Derrick Frigot said that in the light of the reduction of the herd last year as a result of the dairy industry restructuring scheme, the society had reassessed the position of the herd from a genetic point of view as well as looking at how best to breed the Jersey cow of the future.The important question was not so much that the Island herd had been reduced by about 20 per cent, he said, but that the number of milking cows were now being kept in only 35 separate herds, and the number of herds was likely to decline even further.
That compared to around 9,000 cows kept in some 800 herds in the late 1940s.
The present state of the Island herd meant that bloodlines were narrowing very fast, he explained.No decisions would be made at the meeting, he said, and the membership were there only to listen to Dr Bichard’s own views on how the small population of Island Jersey cows could be best managed in the future.Jersey has been genetically closed since the late 18th century.
