Truly back to the future!!

The news about the recent highly successful Jersey development day/open barn meetings at Ferme Reyla and Rapid Bay Jerseys in Western Quebec really got us thinking as you know from a previous post.
two hundred and thirty plus people at a Jersey day!

Something kept tickling the back of my mind as I thought about that total attendance.
We had cause to dive into bound volumes of the Jersey Breeder that we keep in our "back room" at Jersey Canada Hqs recently. Happened that we had to look at those issues from 1959, half a century ago! Then it all clicked! As so often happens the bound volume opened up to August 1959 and an article by R. W. Nason entitled "Nova Scotia Field Day, Held on the North Shore" caught my eye. Hardly a surprise I'd be interested as the first twenty years of my life had been spent growing up on Nova Scotia's North Shore! The very first paragraph began this way: "With well over two-hundred-and-seventy-five in attendance the 1959 Jersey Field Day could not only be considered as one of the largest livestock events of its kind in the province.....". This was the article I had been thinking about!

Now at the moment this event was held at the Stony Acre Jersey Farm of Sigbert MacConnell and his son Rae at Meadowville in Pictou County a few miles a little three year old nipper, who is now typing these words, was probably giving his Mother grey hairs!

It is really something to think that half a century, fifty years later, we are having very similar turnouts at Jersey events! Consider all the changes the industry has gone through!

The news about the roaring success of the event in Quebec ties in so well with other levels of activity we are seeing this year. In fact we are now back to levels of memberships and registrations that have not been seen since the era when All-Jersey pr grams were being wrapped up and pooling of milk was happening. The Jersey breed went on a downhill slide in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Most would say that supply management has been a great thing for the Canuck dairy producer in many ways. There was, however; a period of radical adjustment to the new reality and new system for the Jersey breed as special markets for Jersey milk disappeared. Thankfully some talented dairy producers, aware of the Jersey's ability to profit in any market stuck continued to develop their Jersey herds. Today, those still with us, can take a great measure of satisfaction that the breed is back where it was four decades ago in a much smaller industry cow and producer number wise!


Four decades later we've more than regained lost ground! Supply management continues to exist but has been adapted to allow for creation of specialty products some from Jersey milk only! And all that remains is to wonder: What next? How far can the recovery go?

"Wethinks" the top of the extended Jersey surge has yet to be reached-perhaps we're still only in the early stages!

Forty, fifty years on we're still "growing, we're still going strong" as Mame in the musical would same!