September 2019

With 800 milking and dry cows, the dairy of John Koster (JMK Holsteins) is clearly below the average size in Texas (1343 cows), making it the fifth state for milk production in the US. ‘Compared to farms in the West, I a...

With six finalists, including the Grand Champion, as well as the best herd group Raunhøj Dairy had a sensational performance during the Danish National Show. A visit with the Therkildsen was already scheduled. Thanks to...

Suddenly he appeared: Oxterril. With +218 gISU (index release 4/2019) one of the very highest in the French index round. With a relatively unknown sire (Surgeon, more about him later) and a virtually unknown maternal lin...

Here we are! We have arrived at the top-4, and thus the quartet of HI reader’s highest ranking breeders during the last 25 years. In this HI issue, we announce number four… and likely no one is surprised that this positi...

Todd Stanek is niet opgegroeid met geregistreerde Holsteins; hij was al volwassen toen zijn passie voor fokkerij zich manifesteerde. Recentelijk, op de jaarlijkse National Holstein Convention, werd hij trots erkend als 4...

When our photographer Christine Massfeller was asked if she would be able to take a picture at the Kleemann family farm in Germany, the request itself was already unique. The Kleemanns’ did not just want to photograph on...

At Cogent in Great Britain, they had to bid farewell to a popular favourite in their sire facility: Cogent Twist. And… Twist was not only a favourite among his caretakers, but also of many dairy farmers world-wide. Which...

On first glance, it is the all-around positive values for all management and health traits that grab attention. Additionally, there is the good heritability for production and proper conformation with great udders. We ar...

No matter what you think of line-breeding, it worked for Canada’s Nr.1 gLPI sire S-S-I Biggelo, as the Delroy-son features the O-Man Mirror family on both sides of his pedigree. Although Biggelo’s dam died prior to calvi...

The Kathy family at Penn-Dell is built around a daughter-dam pair of 94-point cows that have both been Grand Champion at their county fair. Further back in the pedigree we find a number of successful bull dams. Here is t...

In 2013 she won the Quebec People’s Choice Cow of the Year title: Lehoux Goldwyn Ruby is a 20 star brood cow with 7 EX and 23 VG daughters and produced over 100,000kg of milk lifetime. And she is backed by a very deep an...

Although we are now nearly 30 years on from when Castelverde Chief Mark Susy EX-97 was born, her genetics have not got old. In the Castelverde herd her genetics are as relevant as ever. Here we discover why…

Don Mayer in Wisconsin has such confidence in Catamount’s genetics, in three years he would like 75% of his 55-cow Mayerlane herd to be from her family. Every calf born from the family has a big pedigree, and most recent...

Progressively, more and more breeders are paying attention to management traits. The reason is the impact they have on farm profitability. Chief among these traits is longevity: If an animal does well for all the other t...

At the Genetics Conference 2019, Dr. Mike Lohuis, Vice President of Research and Innovation at Semex, based in Guelph, Canada, presented a 10-Year report card on genomics. Lohuis started his career in the mid 80s as a si...