Cattle breeds of the islands

Islands have produced some of the best-known breeds and some of the strangest. Isolation keeps a breed pure, and limited grazing often favours small animals. The Jersey and the Guernsey of the Channel Islands, the Kerry and the Dexter of Ireland, the Bali cattle of Indonesia and the racing bulls of Madura are island cattle. So are the feral herds that lived for a century on remote islands, such as the cattle of Enderby Island in the subantarctic south of New Zealand.

The Channel Islands

Jersey and Guernsey lie off the coast of Normandy, and each gave its name to a small, fawn dairy cow known for rich, yellow milk. On Jersey, a law of 1789 banned the import of live cattle to the island, to keep the breed pure, and the Jersey herd book dates from the 1860s. Both breeds spread from the islands to England, North America, New Zealand and South Africa, and the Jersey is now one of the most widespread dairy breeds.

Ireland, Wales and the Scottish isles

The Kerry of southwest Ireland is a small, black, hardy dairy cow, among the oldest breeds of Europe. The Dexter, also Irish, is even smaller and is now popular on smallholdings. Welsh Black cattle, Highland cattle on the Hebrides and the native cattle of Shetland were all shaped by island and coastal grazing, wind and salt. Many of these breeds became rare in the twentieth century and were saved by enthusiasts.

Madura, Bali and the islands of Asia

On Madura, off the coast of Java, the native cattle are a mix of zebu and banteng, raised by farmers for work and meat and, in the best cases, for the karapan sapi bull races. On Bali, the island's own cattle are the domestic banteng, and Bali has been kept free of other breeds to protect them. In Sri Lanka and the Maldives, small local cattle were kept by island farmers long before imported breeds arrived.

Feral island herds

Cattle left on remote islands sometimes went wild and lived for generations without people. Cattle released on Enderby Island in the Auckland Islands lived wild there for about a century before they were removed to restore the island's plants and birds; a few were taken off to keep the line alive. On Amsterdam Island in the Indian Ocean, feral cattle lived from the nineteenth century until they were removed in 2010. In Hawaii, cattle given to Kamehameha I in 1793 began the herds worked by the paniolo, the Hawaiian cowboys.

Worth knowing

Jersey: Fawn dairy cow of the island of Jersey
Guernsey: Golden dairy cow of Guernsey
Kerry: Small black dairy cow of southwest Ireland
Dexter: Small Irish breed of smallholdings
Madura cattle: Island cattle bred for karapan sapi races
Bali cattle: Kept pure on the island of Bali
Enderby Island cattle: Feral herd of the New Zealand subantarctic
Paniolo: The cowboys of Hawaii

Good to know

Small island breeds often thrive on rough grazing; avoid overfeeding.
Shelter from salt wind matters on exposed coasts.
On small islands, plan grazing carefully, since land and fodder are limited.

Sources and further reading

About this page

Original text by the EveryCow desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Customs are described as tradition, not as advice. If we have something wrong, tell us.

Islands on EveryCow

The breeds written up so far, best known first.

Islands: its breeds