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Don and June Ferguson hosted the Queen at their farm in 1990. Photo: Supplied.
Otorohanga farmer Warren Ferguson’s family has had a special relationship with the late Queen Elizabeth II over the years.
Warren’s father, Don, set up Ferdon Jerseys (now called Ferdon Genetics) in 1949. In 1975, he started breeding Jersey cows here in New Zealand after meeting the Queen’s herdsman.
After that, two bulls were sent over to the UK.
“I took the first two heifers over in ‘77,” Warren told Dairy News.
He says other cattle went to the UK after that and the farm and the Queen co-owned cows here in New Zealand.
It was the start of a friendship between his late father, who died in 2017, and the Queen, Warren says.
“The friendship between Dad and the Queen had been going on since then, I suppose.”
Don, with wife June, would go on to have afternoon tea with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at Te Rapa Racecourse in Hamilton during the 1977 royal tour. In 1990, during the Queen’s 1990 tour of New Zealand, her seventh out of ten total tours, she visited the Fergusons’ farm.
“When Dad passed away, I spoke to the Queen and we just continued it on,” Warren says.
He says the Queen was great to talk to.
“It was just like you and I talking now,” he says.
“It was pretty easy, just like anyone else.”
Queen Elizabeth II passed away earlier this month at Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire, Scotland at the age of 96.
Her eldest son, Charles III, ascended to the throne this month after his mother’s death and will be formally crowned sometime in the second half of 2023 or early 2024.
Warren says he isn’t yet aware whether the breeding arrangement between his family and the royal family will continue.
“Who knows? I mean, the herd at Windsor has been going since 1871… it’s been passed through the generations, so you’d like to think it’d continue.”
One of New Zealand’s deepest breeder Jersey herds – known for its enduring connection through cattle with the UK’s longest reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II – will host its 75th anniversary celebration sale on-farm on April 22.
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