The remarkable story of saving the cattle of Enderby Island

Enderby Island is over 400km south of Invercargill, 688ha (1700 acre) sitting just off the much larger Campbell Island.

It is a cold, barren place but back in the late 1890s someone thought they would try farming it. Cattle and sheep were shipped there, but the idea was a disaster due to its isolation and harsh environment. When the venture was abandoned, the sheep died out, but a small herd of cattle survived. They supplemented their diet of native trees and shrubs with seaweed foraged from the beach during low tide.

Unfortunately, the cattle also destroyed a lot of the delicate eco-system of the island, which is home to rare native birds and other sea life, and were often desperately hungry.

In the early 1990s, DOC went in to shoot the cattle to preserve the island. The Rare Breeds Conservation Society asked to take semen and eggs from the herd, in the hope of preserving its unique DNA.

“They closely resemble cattle on the Shetland islands,” says Dave. “They look very much like them, the same smaller size, the slope of their rump, even in colour.”

He was one of the Rare Breeds team who went in with DOC. Harvesting could only be carried out on animals once they had been killed. They would later find the eggs were not viable and the semen was of poor quality. Breeding efforts failed.

Two years later, Dave and colleague Michael Willis were back on the island to save some of its rabbits (another rare breed) when hoofprints were discovered. The result was the capture of the very last Enderby Island cow. Lady was shipped back to NZ in an attempt to keep her breed’s genetics going.

After years of attempts, including NZ’S first cloning project that produced a calf named Elsie and several other clones, numbers were still incredibly low.

However, thanks to modern fertility technology, the low-quality semen from the first visit was eventually able to be used to give the Enderby cattle in NZ several different bloodlines.

Three herds now exist: the one Dave has, another one in Canterbury and one in Taranaki.