This has become a well-known name among Jersey cattle breeders of the United States and frequently used in advertising strains of blood by the various owners. This is easily accounted for by the high stand taken by Jersey cows owned, developed and bred in Tennessee. Many years ago the pioneer breeders of this favorite dairy breed of cattle, Major Campbell Brown, Judge Thos. H. Malone, M. C. Campbell, M. M. Gardner, and the writer of this article, W. J. Webster, built their herds on a very solid foundation:
First—Constitution and ability to stand long continued high feed.
Second—Richness of milk as well as quantity, but with the goal always centered on production of butter as ascertained by actual test, without any instrument, calculation or guess work. The churn was adopted as a test system.
Third—Beauty, symmetry and general conformity. We early in our course of breeding determined that beauty of cattle should not be ignored, but was an element certainly in the sale. Therefore, Tennessee Jerseys were bred for all these qualities claimed and I do not think that anywhere in the United States a more uniform or more beautiful set of animals could be found.
The Middle Basin of Tennessee is especially adapted to the breeding, rearing and developing of this cow. We have here the elements of the soil entering into the blood of the animal which I think develops them more highly than in any other portion of the United States. We have lime rock and bone phosphate of lime entering into the water they drink, and the bluegrass and other grasses that they eat, corn, oats and hay consumed by them, and also mingled with enough iron so that the very highest opportunities are available for their growth. This thought applies not alone to the Jersey cow but to the whole animal kingdom as evidenced by the fact that some of the finest race horses in the world, either running or pacing horses, have been developed in this Middle Basin of Tennessee. In point of climate we are exceptionally well located, all things considered, about the same as the Isle of Jersey, the original home of the Jersey cow. No wonder then that with the additional advantages of our soil mentioned above the Jersey has developed wonderfully in Tennessee.
The question is sometimes asked why prices have declined the last twelve or fifteen years. My reply is that prices have not declined all over the United States, but that the old breeders have dropped out in Tennessee and that there are now very few breeders in Tennessee paying any attention to the development of the Jersey cow. Recently Messrs. Overton and Gardner, of Nashville, have begun to pay more attention to it and I predict that if this is continued the prices will again rise for they have not fallen in New York and other centers, but the present year sales are higher than they have ever been at auction, as shown by the general average at the Cooper sale of over six hundred dollars per head, a single animal bringing ten thousand dollars and that in a sale of over a hundred animals. So it is not a declining in the prices of the breed cattle but simply a lack of driving their interests in Tennessee.
The system of testing Jerseys and knowing exactly what they were capable of doing did more to develop them than anything else. The American is always an eminently practical man and wants to know what he is doing instead of guessing. The Tennessee breeders inaugurated this test system, Messrs. Campbell Brown, Thos. H. Malone, M. M. Gardner and W. J. Webster having edited the first compilation of test in the United States as a venture of their own and at their own risk and expense; then turned it over to the Club of American Jersey Cattle Breeders, and the work has been continued by the club since that time. Prior to this time tests were reported to newspapers and frequently tests were claimed for ancestors of cattle that subsequent research showed were either tests for one day multiplied by seven, making it an estimate test, or in some instances that they did not exist at all. It therefore required a large amount of labor to run down by correspondence all this and procure from their owners the actual tests, and these were published with the tabulated pedigree of the cow. This work caused a boom in the Jersey family shown to be prominent, and this has continued all along where they were pushed and developed. Tennessee breeders were fortunate in having laid well their foundation as it was based on such cows as Landseer’s Fancy, Oonan, Duchess of Bloomfield, Beeswax, Kate Gordon and other prominent and beautiful cows and it so happened that the cows named possessed all the requisites, constitution, richness and beauty, and no money was spared in heading the herd with such animals as Imported Tormentor, Signalda, Ida’s Stoke Pogis, Gold Basis, Southern Prince and other noted animals too numerous to mention. From these came what is known as the Tennessee Jerseys, possessing constitution, richness and beauty. As proof of the wonderful development of these cows any person who desires to be informed has only to consult the test books in charge of the American Jersey Cattle Club to find that the richest cattle ever bred, owned and developed were in Tennessee: Bisson’s Belle with the yearly test of 1,028 pounds and fifteen ounces, that held the champion cup, was developed in Tennessee; Landseer’s Fancy tested 936 pounds fourteen and three-quarter ounces in one year, was developed in Tennessee and held the cup. She and her descendants are known for their extreme richness: so marvelously rich that they were compelled to demonstrate their ability to make this test again and again, a number of times by official tests, by disinterested committees and verified by chemical analysis.
I could not in this article undertake to give a list of Jersey cows from Tennessee in the honor roll, but only mention a few of the prominent ones: Ethleel the Second, 30 pounds 15 ounces at two and one-half years old; Landseer’s Fancy, 29 pounds one-half ounce; Bisson’s Belle, 28 pounds 10 ounces; Toltec’s Fancy, 27 pounds 5½ ounces—this cow was officially tested by the Alabama experiment station and Major Campbell Brown, and her milk analyzed at Vanderbilt University confirms the test showing butter fat 16.32 per cent, equivalent to one pound of butter to 4.79 of milk; Oonan, 22 pounds 2½ ounces; Duchess of Bloomfield, 20 pounds one-half ounce; Cherokee Rose, 23 pounds 10 ounces. And I might continue even from memory, as this article is dictated from memory (no records being before me), and give a long list. But for the purposes of this article it would be useless and simply a compilation that the people would not read, so I only call attention to the fact that the champion cup, a large silver urn costing five hundred dollars, was held only four times in all; twice in Tennessee against the whole United States. But to prove that the Tennessee Jersey has life in any other hands, scattered far and wide over the United States we have only to look at the work of the last great test at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis to show what their descendants have done.
BISSON’S BELLE.