Mark Bardall owns 20 purebred Holsteins within the
100-cow herd of Roger Kiko of Carrolton OH with whom he works part time (Mark
is a former herdsman for the OSU Ag Tech training dairy). They are aAa clients of Greg
Palen. Starting from a GP daughter of
Townson Lindy who analyzed 5-1-6, Mark used Maughlin Storm (aAa 1-5-6) and
produced a VG88 cow still in milk at ten years. Based on an aAa of 4-2-3 for the “Storm”,
Mark used Regancrest Elton Durham (aAa 4-3-2) and produced the committee score
cow above (her fourth scoring—VG85, then VG88, then EX92, now EX95-2E). She in turn has her first milking
daughter scored VG86 as a two year old—that sire’s highest scored first calf
heifer.
Holstein USA’s type classification
system only makes 2% of all cows scored “Excellent” (90 or higher).
It requires a committee of three
classifiers to agree for a cow to score 95 or higher, and they account for less
than 10% of all cows scored “Excellent”.
So this is a great honor for Mark, who has bred other VG and EX cows
from his small herd, but never one as exciting as this one.
Mark’s comment: “You don’t need every
hot bull that comes along, but you do need the right bull at the right time for
the cows you have. I value aAa as a
tool that helps me to avoid making bad matings, and as all good bulls have some
bad daughters, with a small herd I cannot afford to get them.”
Roger’s comment: “In a larger herd,
you play the percentages. The best
cows keep it interesting, but it is avoiding the bad ones that makes you a
profit. With aAa I get more good ones
and fewer bad ones.”
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