-header.png)
12 Good news stories from 2025
RJA&HS Junior Handlers Training Day
A day of training for our young Cattle Show participants was held for the first time in recent years on 18th May and was a great success! 23 junior members took part in the day where they learnt to put a halter on, wash and clip their heifer ready
for the Showring and how to handle an animal for judging in the Showring. The judge said that improvement in the children’s skills and confidence was absolutely remarkable! We had great fun organising this day and look forward to a similar event in 2026.
Recording breaking Horticultural Show in October!
The October Show which is the biggest Horticultural Show of the year, received more entries than ever this year! 1,183 exhibits were entered, which is 155 more exhibits than last October! We are delighted to see interest and enthusiasm in horticultural activities continue to grow!
Congratulations go to the Rachelle and the Horticultural Committee for creating such wonderful Shows.
Digital Archive creation
The Society was delighted to receive funding from the Jersey Community Foundation (with funds from the Channel Islands Lottery) for the creation of a digital archive for the reports and articles by the Society, that are almost 200 years old! Digitising these important​ documents will not only preserve them, but will also mean they are accessible and easily searchable for everyone on the internet.
The scanning process is almost complete and we expect the database to go live in the middle of 2026. Watch this space!
We took some cows to town!
When the Jersey Hospitality Association asked if the Society would get involved with their Delicious Dine Out Food Festival in town at the end of April, we jumped at the chance of taking our Discover Dairy marquee on the road, complete with two calves from Westlands!
​
The weekend was an enormous success, with over 8,000 people visiting the festival, each one visiting the tent and meeting the calves. Children were able to sample Jersey Dairy’s chocolate milk as a prize for completing a Scavenger Hunt within the marquee. Dairy farmers were on hand to chat to the public and arts and crafts were a big hit with the children.
​
Events like these are a real team effort, so enormous thanks go to everyone involved in making it happen!
Record breaking cake auction!
Hundreds of people enter our Cake Competitions at the Horticultural shows each year. At the end of each Show, the cakes are auctioned off for charity by our fabulous auctioneer Steve Le Feuvre.
​
The Cake Auction at the October Show raised a whopping great £1,060 for the Jersey Lifeboat Association, almost double what is usually raised at these auctions, making a new record!
The Society was delighted to also support Brightly, The Salvation Army and Dementia Jersey this year. Thank you to everyone who baked and entered their cakes to contribute towards these fabulous charitable donations!
Cattle Shows watched online by thousands around the world
For the first time this year, we had both RJA&HS Cattle Shows live streamed across the world via our Facebook platform. More than 5,000 people around the world tuned in for the Saturday In-Milk cattle classes in June, with the Youngstock show and October’s two Cattle Shows not far behind in viewing numbers.
​
Thanks go to Becky Barnes-Barrington for filming these and making it happen!
Support for school gardens
​
Our annual schools garden competition receives entries from a range of schools and is kindly sponsored by Le Quesne’s Nursery each year. We were delighted when the team at Andrew Le Maistre Landscapes also offered to support any schools involved in the competition, who needed guidance, soil or manpower in getting started.
​
In April, nursery children at Plat Douet School were thrilled when a truck load of soil arrived, and they helped to fill their rejuvenated mud kitchen area and created a new wild flower garden.
​
Any Primary Schools or Nurseries wishing to enter or enquire about support from Andrew Le Maistre Landscapes should contact r.robinson@royaljersey.co.uk or call 860648
Wednesday Club goes from strength to strength
​
Over the summer (on a Wednesday), the Society organises herd visits around local dairy farms for those involved in the dairy industry, as a way to learn from each other and get together. These visits are growing in popularity every year, and we were delighted that more than 40 members attended the programme this year.
Dairy for Development (D4D)
Our Dairy for Development work continues with projects in Rwanda, Malawi and Zambia, as well as technical advisory support in Nepal, working with smallholder farmers and successfully improving dairying on a global scale. Our thanks go to Jersey Overseas Aid for their continued support of this work.
​
The D4D team were also delighted to welcome Lindsay Ellis in April this year, as a Programmes Enhancement Officer. Lindsay previously led and supported multi-million-dollar projects in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and North America. Her experience spans large-scale education and agriculture programmes, as well as operational improvements in public services and higher education institutions. She is supporting the delivery and external engagement of Dairy for Development projects, and coordinating cross-cutting initiatives such as the Africa Jersey Forum.
​
Another success from the D4D team was speaking at the Jersey International Development Network (JIDN) organised by Jersey Overseas Aid at the Jersey Arts Centre. It was well attended and a great opportunity to share how the Jersey cow is having an impact across the world, to a wider audience.
Record number of gardens
The RJA&HS All Island Garden Competition takes place in July and is kindly sponsored by Ransoms.
​
A record number of entries were received this year with 68 gardens across the Island being entered. Judges delighted in visiting them all over the course of 4 days and were impressed with the high standard across the board.
Congratulations to the Farmers Inn in St Ouen who took the top prize this year!
New sponsor for Cattle Show class
The Agricultural Department were delighted to welcome Aztec as a new sponsor of a Cattle Show class. Aztec are kindly sponsoring the new class for heifers aged 0-6 months, which is a class that has recently split from the heifers aged 0-12 month class, due to the growing number of entries from Junior Members each year.
Thank you to Aztec for their kind sponsorship and to our other Cattle Show sponsors Alex Picot and Hepburns for their ongoing support.
There are still Cattle Show classes that are not yet sponsored, if any organisations would like to be involved, please get in touch with louise@royaljersey.co.uk
Charity events at the Royal Jersey Showground
WWe are pleased to welcome lots of different events to our facilities at the Royal Jersey Showground, ranging from theatre productions, boxing events, corporate dinners and lots more. Many of these events raise money for local charities and support very worthy causes.
Our calculations suggest that more than £400,000 has been raised for charity through events held at the Showground during 2025!