(If you are a RANCHER looking for Caroline Gasperi’s website on Castle Nugent Senepol, click here!)

(If you are looking for Caroline’s definitive history of the Senepol breed, click here!)

With the current Senepol ranch operating here since 1957 and other cattle ranches preceding us, Castle Nugent is thought by historians to be one of the oldest ongoing cattle ranches in the West Indies. However, Castle Nugent was not always strictly a cattle ranch.

A watercolor painting by Caroline’s nephew shows the sweeping views of the ranch lands and the sea beyond, with four of the five remaining estate buildings visible. /painting by Luca Gasperi

The main house was built on a land grant registered in the Danish archives in 1730 and is thought to date from that period. Cattle, cotton, and indigo were cultivated here. The Estate’s five remaining buildings include a cotton shed (now converted into a small house), and a tiny chapel, now my home. My old documents regarding the estate include letters from the plantation owner in the 1780s. He was running a cotton plantation with a few cattle. The farm was later converted to a sugar cane plantation, complete with a cane mill visible along the shoreline from the gallery at the front of the house.

African longhorned cattle pulling a sugar cane cart in the1880s on St. Croix.

Probably ten to twenty slaves lived here on the plantation in its heyday. We still find pottery shards and other artifacts when we’re working cattle in the pastures, left over from either slave shanties or from Arawak camp sites.

We don’t know how Castle Nugent got its name – Castle Nugent is both a castle and a county, in Ireland.

Denmark sold the island of St. Croix to the United States in 1917. Estate Castle Nugent changed hands between old Danish island families several times before its purchase by the Wall family (my parents) in the early 1950s, who also had purchased the historical Paladian house at Cane Garden Estate. My husband Mario and I, newly married, saw great potential in the Senepol cattle which thrived in the hot, arid landscape of St. Croix’s south shore.

N’Dama cattle being worked at Estate Longford (part of the Castle Nugent ranching operation) in the 1950s.

N’Dama cattle were brought from Africa to St. Croix with the first slave ships. The last to arrive from Africa were purchased in the 1800s by the owner of Longford Estate (now a part of Castle Nugent Farms operations) and were part of the operation until the late 1960s. The first Senepol cattle were added to the Castle Nugent herd in 1957. The herd still shows its African influence today. It was from this ranch that the Senepol Association was managed for its first fifteen years, by my late husband, Dr. Mario Gasperi.

The original Virgin Islands Senepol Association, 1976. From left: Enrico Gasperi (Mario’s younger brother), Mrs. Caroline and Dr. Mario Gasperi, Henry Nelthropp Sr., Oscar Henry, Hans Lawaetz, Dr. D. Padda and Dr. Ike Eller. Today, Mario’s brother Enrico Gasperi, Caroline, and Mario’s son Mauro Gasperi, are still working cattle at Castle Nugent Farms.

Today, exportation of Senepol from Castle Nugent Farms for breeding purposes has been steady during the past 10 years. (Embryos and semen are also exported.) Castle Nugent Farms is considered a Genetic Bank for the Senepol breed. Live animal shipments have been consistently intense in recent years to all the Sun Belt States (Florida through Texas) and Australia, with the result that CN brand is quite common on many ranches with Senepol cattle.

An aerial photo of Castle Nugent taken in 1988 shows the unpaved South Shore Road in the foreground, the estate buildings in the center of the photo and to the north, the sea on the north shore of the island.

Much of the beef produced here at Castle Nugent from non-breeding stock is sold locally. Popularity of Senepol beef continues to rise as health conciousness does; more people are demanding grass-fed, hormone-free low-fat beef that is naturally rich in flavor and nutrients.

Castle Nugent Farms began exporting cattle from St. Croix in 1977. Today there are four generations of the Gasperi family at Castle Nugent Farms!

Traffic stops as a herd of Castle Nugent cows
with young calves crosses South Shore Road.

Castle Nugent Farms has been breeding Senepol since 1957 on our ranch on St. Croix, the largest of the US Virgin Islands, a territory of the U.S. At Castle Nugent, genetics and free range have kept the breed’s qualities at their highest level through the years. Selection and improvement are a constant active goal on our ranch on the East end of St. Croix, (where climatic conditions are harsher than on the West end of the island) to always reach for the top in fertility, performance and conformation. CN cattle are sold world wide and can be found in South Africa, Mexico, Venezuela, Australia and the U.S. southeast and as far west as Oregon.

For more information about renting our Guesthouse or to request a brochure, call or send address to:

Caroline Gasperi
Castle Nugent Farms
Phone/Fax (340) 773-1508
POB 969 Christiansted St.Croix VI 00821