Kerry

The Kerry is an Irish dairy cow and one of the oldest cattle breeds in Europe. It descends from the small black Celtic cattle that were in Ireland at the time of Caesar's invasion of Britain, and it takes its name from County Kerry.

It was among the most common cattle in Ireland before the 1600s and almost unknown anywhere else. Imported breeds and crossbreeding cut the population through the 1800s, and pure Kerries survived in the poor southwest, where a cow that milked on thin forage was worth keeping.

The first Kerries reached Pennsylvania in 1818 and never caught on. Today's North American herd traces to re-imports of cattle and semen from the 1960s, and breeders here register through the Kerry Cattle Society in Ireland.

Expect a small, hardy cow giving 5,000 to 7,000 pounds of easily digested milk a year, still productive into her teens. They are solid black, with a little white allowed on the underline.

One thing to get straight: a Kerry is not a large Dexter. The two were once recorded in the same herd book, which started the myth that the Dexter is a dwarf Kerry. Genetic work has shown they are separate breeds.