Lot 11, or Beledene Sam's Starlee is described as a super cow in the auction book.
Lot 11, or Beledene Sam's Starlee is described as a super cow in the auction book.
One of New Zealand's most recognised purebred jersey studs is set to close this week, ending seven decades of breeding.
This Friday, Malcolm, Margaret and Donald Revell will hold a complete dispersal sale of Beledene Jersey Stud, marking the end of an era.
In total 290 animals — a mix of cows, heifers and bulls — will go under the hammer. The stud was started in 1949 by Arthur and Peggy Revell who purchased the farm itself back in 1927.
At the time Arthur had stud pigs. He started with 10 or 12 breeding Berkshire sows, later adding some Tamworths to the stud.
His son Malcolm, remembers his dad then milking a grade herd of jerseys some years later.
"He thought if you were going to milk good cows you may as well milk stud ones, so that's when we started in the registered game in 1949."
When it came to choosing the name, the first choice for a prefix was Belmont, because at that point they had Belmont pigs, but the name was already taken, recalls Malcolm.
"Beledene, which was actually our third choice, was the name that came to be."
Malcolm says he and his brother Donald both left school at the age of 15 and started work on the family farm. His father, he says, knew how to pick good animals.
"Dad could really put animals together. He taught me to read a pedigree.
"He said if you haven't got the right animals in the third and fourth generation then you are not going to get them in the first generation, so I've always looked back in the pedigree."
Arthur's love of his stud and milking carried on throughout his life. Malcolm says Arthur milked until about six weeks before he died at age 95.
"In the end his heart wore out. He always said he'd like to wear out, not rust out. That was his motto."
The current Beledene herd consists of eight different female families. Half the lines descend from a jersey cow named Primrose, who was imported from England in the late 1860s or early 1970s.
Three of the families are descendants of the first three jerseys to set foot in New Zealand in 1862.
Arthur and Peggy Revell.
The sale will be the end of an era and is expected to attract hundreds of people from across the country.
"We have been blessed with some truly great cows in our time and it's been a pleasure and privilege to work with them."
Beledene Sam's Starlee, who's described "as a truly world-class cow", is for sale as Lot 11. She was crowned NZ Premier Pedigree Dairy Cow two years running in 2015 and 2016 and was Supreme Champion at the Taranaki Purebred Show in January.
