The Guernsey Breed 61 



A strange fact came to my notice at my last visit, that 

 when butchers on Jersey slaughter an animal with particularly 

 yellow fat they send the meat over to be sold in Guernsey. 

 This bears out the oft-repeated assertion that often an indi- 

 vidual Jersey will yield butter as yellow as that of any Guern- 

 sey. But this is not universal for the Jersey breed, whereas 

 Guernsey butter is always yellow, and the Guernsey people 

 have learned to prefer beef with yellow fat. They know that 

 yellow fat is not an indication of an old animal, which is a 

 popular misconception in our country. I have eaten some 

 most excellent beef in Guernsey from native cattle. Many 

 steers are fattened and butchered for the Christmas trade. 



Contagious diseases have up to recent years been compara- 

 tively unknown in the Channel Islands. There was at least 

 one serious outbreak of foot and mouth disease many years 

 ago, but it was entirely stamped out and there has never been 

 a recurrence of it. 



No case of tuberculosis has ever been known among the 

 cattle of Alderney and never a reaction to the tuberculin test 

 from any of the several hundred head imported from there. 

 The sa;me was true of Guernsey up to a few years ago, and 

 our government made an exception of the Channel Islands 

 in the laws requiring that every animal coming into the coun- 

 try must pass the tuberculin test, either before shipment or 

 before being released from quarantine on this side. 



In 1905 or 1906, one or two cases of tuberculosis devel- 

 oped in American herds in animals that had been recently im- 

 ported from Guernsey, and these were traced back to an island 

 herd whose owner had secured special permission from the 

 Royal Court of the island to allow him to take animals from 

 his herd to England for exhibition purposes, a privilege that 

 had been accorded other breeders. This special permission 

 was required because of the law forbidding the return of any 

 animal taken off the island. Our government at once applied 

 the tuberculin test law to the cattle coming from Guernsey 

 and Alderney, the same being in force until the spring of 1914, 

 when Alderney cattle were again exempted from the test. 



Before rigid measures were taken to stamp out the dis- 

 ease in Guernsey it had spread by sale of stock to several other 

 herds of the island. Each succeeding year the authorities 

 thought they had discovered the last case, but would find 

 others in some new herd, every case being traced back to the 

 cattle of the first diseased herd. 



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