Holstein World: Share with our readers a little background about you and your farm.

Tom Wegner: I live on a 450 cow dairy in Ettrick, WI which is about a half hour north of La Crosse right next to the Mississippi river. The cows are milked in a double eight parallel parlor and housed in a 6 row freestall barn. We have 250 acres with about 200 of that being tillable. We don’t do any field work it is all done by custom harvesters. Our heifers are also raised by a custom heifer grower; they leave when they are three months old and come back about a month before they are due to calve. There are 7 full time and 2 part time employees involved in the farm.

HW: Outline Sherry”’’s pedigree and other unique attributes of her cow family.

Tom: She is a VG-88 Durham x VG-89 Encore. The next dam is a VG-87 Milan owned by Pete Zacharias in Maine.

HW: What are Sherry’s show career achievements?

Tom: We bought her when she was a spring yearling, she was 3rd Spring Yearling at the WI Jr. State Fair in 2005. This year she was Reserve Grand at the District II Holstein Show, 3rd Jr. at WI State Show, and 1st Jr. 2 at the International Junior Holstein show.

HW: What is her current status? Milking, flushing, etc.

Tom: She is currently milking and due to aspen.

HW: Do you have any offspring or offspring on the way from her?

Tom: Nothing yet.

HW: What was it like to exhibit the Grand Champion at the Midwest Fall National? What are your future plans?

Tom: It is quite an honor to win a junior show anywhere, but it is really cool to win at a national show when you know the best of the best are there. To come out on top is just awesome because all the hard work has paid off.

I am currently a sophomore at UW River Falls. I plan to graduate here with a degree in Dairy Science and then go back home and farm.

In this picture, Tom is holding Res. Grand Champion of the Junior Show, Willows-Edge Gib Fancy-ET. His sister, Jenna, is on the halter of the Grand Champion, Zach Durm Do You Po Sherry.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 27th, 2006 at 9:54 am by sschmidt and is filed under Guest Blogger Series. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.