Kerry

It was among the most common cattle in Ireland before the 1600s and almost unknown anywhere else. Imported breeds and crossbreeding cut the population through the 1800s, and pure Kerries survived in the poor southwest, where a cow that milked on thin forage was worth keeping. It was also among the first cattle anywhere bred primarily for milk rather than for draft or meat.

The first Kerries reached Pennsylvania in 1818 and never caught on; by the 1930s they were scarce here. Today's North American herd traces to re-imports of cattle and semen from the 1960s onward. The Kerry Cattle Society was formed in Ireland in 1917 to maintain the purity of the breed, and it still keeps the book.

Expect a small, fine-boned cow, solid black with a little white allowed on the underline, carrying upswept, lyre-shaped white horns with black tips, though many are dehorned. The Livestock Conservancy puts cows at an average of 800 lb and bulls at 1,000 lb.

The milk is the point. The Conservancy puts a year's production at 5,000 to 7,000 lb, with some cows exceeding 10,000; Wikipedia gives 6,600 to 8,200 lb per lactation. The fat globules are small, which makes the milk easy to digest and well suited to cheese, butter and yogurt.

Cows stay productive into their teens.

Docile is the Conservancy's word, with a caveat: they can be nervous, and they are active cattle. The experience level is rated intermediate. Quiet, consistent handling suits them better than a crowded, noisy setup.

Milk first. The Livestock Conservancy lists the Kerry as a dairy breed that also gives meat, and the Irish Kerry Cattle Society describes milk suited to drinking fresh and to cheese and yogurt, with several Irish farmhouse cheesemakers using it. The American Kerry Cattle Association registers the Kerry as a dairy breed.

The beef is a second product: the Irish society says bullocks fatten, though they may take four to six months longer than other breeds, and make excellent beef. The cows suit a single-cow household as well as a herd, and the British society says they make good nurse cows.

The Kerry is a breed built by thin forage. Kerries are rugged, milk on grazing that would dry off a commercial dairy cow, and suit a small acreage. What they mostly need is not to be treated as a high-input animal, because nothing in their history prepared them for it.

The Kerry is ranked Critical on The Livestock Conservancy's Conservation Priority List and is rare everywhere. By 1983 there were only around 200 pedigree Kerry cattle in the world; numbers have recovered somewhat since, but the global population is still small. The North American herd matters beyond North America: if the Irish and British populations were lost, this is part of what would rebuild them.

North American Kerries have been registered with the Kerry Cattle Society in Ireland or in Canada, and the American Kerry Cattle Association, incorporated in 2016, now keeps a US herd book that will not issue pedigrees for upgraded cattle. Ask which book an animal is recorded in, and for the paperwork.

One thing to get straight: a Kerry is not a large Dexter. The two were once recorded in the same herd book, which started the myth that the Dexter is a dwarf Kerry. Genetic work has shown they are separate breeds.

The trade is scale. A Kerry gives a family or a small cheese operation exactly what it needs, and gives a volume dairy nothing it wants. Buy her for the milk quality and the thrift, not for the tank average.

Recent sale prices on HoofnHorn, where there are any, are further down this page.