Welcome to the English Guernsey Cattle trade stand.

Much has been written about the origins of Guernsey Cattle and many claims have been made about the way in which the ‘Guernsey Breed’ came to be established on a small island in the English Channel. In fact, very little concrete evidence exists about the cattle of Guernsey prior to the nineteenth Century and most theories, such as one that suggests that cattle brought to the island by monks who had been banished from Mont St. Michel in the year 960 A.D. formed the foundation of the present breed cannot be verified and must be regarded as conjecture or pure fantasy.

There may be some truth in the theory that the Isigny cattle of Normandy and the Froment du Léon breed from Brittany were ancestral relatives of the modern Guernsey.  Indeed the Jersey, the Guernsey and the Froment du Léon are the only members of the Channel Island sub type of European Blond cattle.

The "Froment du Léon" is a high fat producing breed that was common to the district around the town of St. Pol de Léon, in Brittany.  It is slender, wheat-coloured, lyre-horned and looks very like the old dun Shetland cows of the early twentieth century.  While similar in colour to the Guernsey, it is smaller and of variable conformation.  Indeed the Froment du Léon breed society imported semen from Island Guernsey bulls some years ago in an attempt to improve both conformation and milk yield.  Breed numbers now indicate that its current status is 'at risk.'

All prices include postage & packing.