World Jersey Conference 2025: Winchelsea farmer Lyn Parish

Winchelsea farmer Lyn Parish will open her gate to farmers from across the globe, as part of the World Jersey Conference.

Whether they hail from Jersey in the Channel Islands or New Jersey in the United States, cattle experts the world over are set to visit Lyn Parish’s farm next month.

Nestled at the foothills of the Otway National Park, Lyn’s Winchelsea property will be on display as part of the World Jersey Conference tour, which starts in Melbourne on April 6.

“You can learn a lot from how other countries work with cattle, with their breeding programs, and vice versa,” Lyn said.

“It’ll be good to welcome people here and swap stories and advice about how you can improve things and what to look out for.”

The Parish family’s Jersey herd dates back to the late 1960s when Ernie and Jean Parish

invested in stud heifers.

Originally using their own bulls and then artificial insemination since 1981, they developed a strong commercial herd – originally from New Zealand genetics.

However, the stud was left dormant for a long time before current owners, Lyn and her

husband David and his brother Paul, were inspired a decade ago to reinvest in the breed.

Lyn Parish is showcasing her top Jersey cattle as part of an international conference being staged for the first time in Australia. Photo: Zoe Phillips.

Lyn said their Bonnie View farm now peaks at 800 cows in spring – which necessitated the purchase of a second dairy farm, called Retreat Creek, four years ago.

“We needed the space and the second farm allows for diversity and how you operate day-to-day,” she said.

“One of the attractions of the new farm is that it has irrigation, because our original property didn’t have that. We’ve had a dry winter like most people in western Victoria, so the irrigation has really been worthwhile.”

The second farm is not exclusively Jersey with the Parish family purchasing a few of the former sharefarmers’ cows, so Holsteins and crossbreds are also part of the cattle mix.

Lyn said once or twice a year, some of the cattle are relocated from the main farm to the second property in order to give the cattle room to move.

“It’s a walkable distance between farms, so we just walk 100 or so of the herd down the laneway. It only takes an hour and half, once they had a bit of a feed,” she said.

Jersey Australia together with the World Jersey Cattle Bureau will host the April conference, with proceedings kicking off on April 6 in Melbourne before heading across Victoria to centres such as San Remo, Winchelsea, Warrnambool and Echuca.