The heart of Allandale and Kuku Jerseys
Written by Dianna Malcolm
Featured in the Jersey Focus Spring 2026 issue
Photo above: The 2023 Supreme Champion Jersey from the 2023 NZ DairyEvent,Kuku Tbone Leila, sired by Richies Jace Tbone, and owned by Horn Genetics, Cambridge. Leila (or “Nana” as she is nicknamed) will be on-farm for the World Conference tour in February. Photo: Bradley Cullen Photography.
Peter Horn was given six months to live…14 years ago.
The dairy farmer is living with a usually fatal heart condition that has haunted him and his family for years. After three massive heart attacks – one that left him clinically dead for 7.5 minutes – he takes nothing for granted.
He comes to the table with a huge personality and a deep and binding obsession for his Jersey cows – along with a perfectionism and fierce competitiveness – that has made him one of New Zealand’s king-hitting breeders under the Kuku & Allandale Jersey prefix.
Now, aged 71, Peter and his wife, Kathy, are positioning the fifth generation to continue one of the deepest family legacies in the breed on a new property at Cambridge…
It could have so easily all ended for Peter Horn in 2012 in an ambulance on the roadside outside his Kuku & Allandale’s Jersey herd when the then 56-year-old farmer arrested on the way to hospital after suffering a heart attack at his doctor’s office.
That day his cows were grazing in the roadside paddock right beside their owner as he fought for his life inside the vehicle.
Peter remembers it as if it was yesterday, because it may be one of the few times he wasn’t thinking about cows.
A lot of water has passed under the bridge since that day, including two more heart attacks, multiple operations to replace stents, a pacemaker, and an Implantable Cardioverter- Defibrillator (ICD). Technically Peter is living in heart failure. Peter’s mother died of a heart attack, aged 69, and five of Peter’s seven siblings have also struggled with heart conditions – making heart health a big part of the Horn family’s life story.
It was a trial drug Peter stumbled on to that gave him a fighting chance, after he had been given the news that he had limited time. Peter and Kathy organised his 60th birthday, which felt more like a living wake at the time as they both struggled to absorb Peter’s prognosis. When they were thrown the drug trial lifeline, it ultimately allowed Peter and Kathy (a registered nurse) once again to consider their future, even though the damage to his heart couldn’t be reversed.
“I went to see a surgeon in Auckland for a second opinion, and because my blood pressure had improved he told me the drug trial was an option,” Peter said. “They had trialled it in America but he said they had gone too quick and it hadn’t worked. He also said they found if they administered it slowly, it was working. I could have got the placebo in that trial. There was no way of telling at the start.
“But gradually I started to feel better, so I knew I was getting the real thing. My heart is actually not the problem, it’s that my liver produces cholesterol that blocks my arteries. Then it’s like having iron in the waterline going to the water trough, and eventually the alkathene pipe explodes.
“This drug keeps my arteries clean. When the trial ended, I was off the drug for two years, and then I decided to pay for it myself, and even though it’s expensive, I get an injection every two weeks.”
To the cows
Peter’s healthy obsession is once again the farm. He bought his first Jersey when he was aged 11 years for $35 (after borrowing some money from his younger brother, Craig, to get the deal done). Peveril Mervyns Bolera would also become his first VHC cow and the family is still represented in their highest profile show cows today.
Peter is the latest in a long line of cowmen and women that have all collectively had a hand in shaping Allandale-Kuku Jerseys.
The Kuku stud was founded in 1914 at Ohau by Robert Letham Horn (Peter’s great grandfather). It then passed to Robert’s son, Tom, and grandson, Roger, before it was transferred to Peter in 1975.
The Allandale prefix was founded in 1924 by Robert’s son, Allan (Peter’s grandfather). From Allan, the ownership passed through his two sons, Ronald and Allan Jnr (Peter’s father), and continue with Allan Jnr and Jean and son Peter from 1968.
The legacy of the two names are not lost on Peter, and he has carried both forward under the umbrella of Horn Genetics. This is arguably the oldest Jersey stud in the country to be farmed by one family.
Its forebears used to compete at 17 shows a year, travelling their cows through the country by train. And, make no mistake, its latest guardians continue to push for performance.
Because this is the home of some of the most potent and modern Jersey genetics in the country. Kuku-Allandale has won the aged cow class with three different cows at the NZ DairyEvent for the last five successive years.
It also won Grand Champion Jersey in 2023 with Kuku Tbone Leila (sired by Richies Jace Tbone) along with a slew of broad ribbons in the show. It has an equally strong – albeit smaller presence – in the Ayrshires and Holsteins.
“When I look at my cows, I see my family’s legacy,” Peter said. “I can look at any animal in the herd and trace its lineage back generations – right to the cows my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather bred.
“That connection makes me deeply proud of where I come from. For me, the cows always come first. My passion is breeding for type and production. That’s what gives me enormous pleasure.
“I’ve put my life and soul into these cows. They are everything to me. If we lose one it’s like a death in the family.”
North America brings the protein
Kuku-Allandale’s original bloodlines and maternal matriarchs have been infused with North American genetics since the 1980s.
It was a definitive and controversial choice to not follow the industry’s dominant semen supplier at that time, which became defined by Breeding Worth. But that decision paid the bills and Peter would do it all over again…without hesitation.
Because when the factories started paying for protein, it demanded more milk flow, and the North American sires added frame and milk flow. Crossed with the Horn family’s deep maternal lines, it proved to be a magic mix.
It also made Peter a healthy industry disruptor – with a defiant focus on conformation and production. Their cows’ results have silenced the critics.
The early North American sires Kuku-Allandale used included ValleyStream Duncan Dynamo, ValleyStream J.I.S Juno, 7JE1038 Valentino, and around 800 straws of Richies Jace Tbone (which left the family 150 Tbone daughters).
One of the Horn family’s “trusty old Tbones” is KuKu Tbone Brightlight, is now rising 13 years old. She routinely produces 800kg MS. Tbone also sired the family’s 2023 NZ DairyEvent Grand Champion Jersey, Kuku Tbone Leila.
The family’s top production cow is Kuku Country Natelle EX@4YRS, who produced 9660 litres and 960kg MS in 305 days.
“No matter what you do with North Americans-bred cows they will bloody milk,” Peter said. “Whatever you throw at them they’ll do the hardest for you and give it their all. A lot of people went hard on those genetics, and thought some of those cows over-milked themselves and were frail, but if you put them over the right animals and you got that hybrid vigour, the result was amazing.
“They have those big wide muzzles on them and they could consume a lot of feed. We noticed they did eat a lot more, and you had to feed them. But the more you fed them the more they produced.
“And, as New Zealand is starting to feed more maize, we are increasingly suited to those kinds of cows because we’ve now got barns, and those cows were bred for that environment.”
This is a herd that hasn’t often opened its gates to the general public. It has repeatedly been bypassed by World Conference tours since 1965. This year will be the first time it has been included, and the family is excited to finally showcase it’s whole herd to its fellow global breeders on February 18 from 12.45pm.
Peter is particularly excited to showcase the family’s mature cows – including those two rising 13-year-old matriarchs, Brightlight and Leila.
Shifting farms and changing gears
There has been a recent shift for the family from Feilding to a new farm at Cambridge to make room for the next generation. Their daughter, Michele, 31, (a cardiologist nurse) and her husband, Rob Barclay (Owaka Holsteins, who relinquished his shares in a Qubik franchise) have joined the family farm, and bought into the operation. They are also stewards of the sixth generation with their daughter, Lexi, now running around the calf sheds. Lexi’s sibling is due in November 2026.
Horn Genetics are milking 300 cows this season – 250 Jerseys – with the balance a mix between Holstein and Ayrshires. It has a projected average production of 500kg MS per cow (at the factory). The property includes 103 hectares (13ha in pines) with an additional 30ha leased land across the road. They are milking through a 20-a-side herringbone with rubber matting underfoot and automatic cup removers, they have a compost barn, and a covered feedpad.
“This is why we’ve moved,” Peter said. “The infrastructure here is second-to-none and we’re very lucky to be here. Plus, with my massive heart attacks I’ve had to do something different, because I can’t do the physical work anymore.
“I’m a hard person to work for because I’m a perfectionist, I don’t like to have a post out of place or a gate that’s not hung, and I don’t go home for dinner until all the cows are fed.”
Peter and Kathy’s second daughter Letitia, 28, has been the one working alongside Peter for the last seven years – five of them in a management role with him at their Feilding farm. She has also been preparing and managing their show cows in recent years.
Letitia took a beat in July to explore what the wider global industry has to teach after forming a strong friendship with North American breeders Ernie Kueffner and Terri Packard, of South Mountain Genetics. The couple operate at the very top of the international cattle marketing game. Letitia has joined them for their northern hemisphere show season for the second year – as they prepare for World Dairy Expo at Madison in Wisconsin in October. She is also a committee member for the NZ DairyEvent.
Peter and Kathy’s son, Letham, 30, (and wife Holly) milk 900 cows at Oxford in North Canterbury in the South Island.
Peter’s oldest children, Reuben (and wife Alica) and Rosie (and her husband, Doug) are not involved in the farm, but they have always been there when they have been needed – especially during Peter’s early health challenges.
Connection at showtime
Peter says the whole family comes together at show time and he would like to think that he and Kathy will see Michele, Letham, and Letitia and happily settled in the industry.
The family is planning for a Centennial sale for Allandale in the autumn of 2027 with the majority of in-calf heifers being offered.
Peter says showing cows continues to be the family’s window for their breeding programme. He is proud to have also bred the 2025 Christchurch Royal Show Champion, Allandale Tbone Breille EX (owned by the Geddes family at Tahora Farms).
He would like to see the national Fieldays® scheduled around a show to bring the stud and commercial industry together more often. Because (for him), the shows continue to be a special time.
“Well, it’s in my blood given that we’re the oldest showing family of probably any breed in the country, and my children also love it, he said.
“And, there’s nothing like standing behind your cows at a show and watching them come together.”
With his passion for Jerseys passed through to their children – who are all following in their parents in some form or another – the Horn legacy is in safe hands.
