Jersey cattle originate from Jersey the largest Island in the Channel Islands and just some 14 miles away from the French coast.
There are fewer than 6000 Jerseys on the Island in total with nearly 4000 of these being adult milking cows. The purity of the breed on the Island is maintained by a strict ban on imports. This ban has been in place for some 150 years. There are no other breeds of the cattle on the Island.
The Jersey shares a common ancestry with not only the Guernsey breed but also those cattle found on the Normandy and Brittany coasts. This type of cattle is believed to have originally travelled up across Europe from the Middle East.
Jerseys are known to exist in the UK mainland since 1741 and probably well before. At that time they were known as Alderney's.
The Jersey Cattle Society was founded in 1878.
