Wednesday, March 18, 2015

North Florida Holsteins and Green Meadow Farms – kindred spirits

From the July 2011 Dairy Route Newsletter


54HO 480  No Fla Legend   (aAa 156324)  and  54HO 509 No Fla Perpetual  (aAa 342156)  are two of the sires we offer through International Protein Sires bred in the “North Florida” dairy of Don Bennick.
Don worked closely with the late Pete Blodgett (formerly of Landmark Genetics, then DMS) in devising large herd selection programs to improve cow fertility, health and fitness traits while gaining production.   

Pete worked in recent years with Green Meadow Farms in Elsie, MI to address these issues, and visitors to this 3600 cow herd are impressed by the higher level of uniformity compared to most large scale dairy herds.   The year of Pete’s passing they hosted a very successful 250 cow “production” sale that showed the multiple income stream possibilities from multi-trait sire selections and individual cow matings.

Pete encouraged use of some No-Fla young sires at GMF.    They recently calved three heifers sired by No Fla Perpetual that are catching the eye of visitors, raising our confidence in this newer sire.    He is a bull who sires “clean” thighs, bone and rib-- yet puts strong front ends, wide rumps, soft textured udders and deep feet fairly consistently on his daughters.     

Another successful experiment at Green Meadow (used on a few “Red” cows) appears to be  6H1124  Fitz Hill Tycoon Red   (aAa 456321)  who is our highest ranking “Red” sire for fertility/health/fitness  traits, and offers significant outcross to both B&W or R&W Holsteins.    

No comments:

Post a Comment