Holstein World: What are the current stats at Willows-Edge? Number of animals, acres farmed, type of facilities? Sires being used? Major cow families that are being developed?

Willows Edge: The farm is 975 acres located in St Croix County, WI which is one of the metro counties of Minneapolis and St Paul. We have 600 tillable acres which all of the land is utilized for feed for the cattle. In 2006 we discounted our rental agreement on the St Croix County Farm barn which we have had for 15 years. This reduced our work load by half but also reduced our milk cow numbers by almost half. Currently we have 100 milk cows housed in a traditional tie stall barn. We raise all of our heifers at our own facilities. Quite frankly we would not trust anyone else to take care of them. We really believe in feeding the highest quality feed to our heifers and maintaining a dry and clean bedding area when they are young.

The current BAA is 110.9 with 55% of the herd in their first lactation. The herd average is 24,730 with a 4.1% Butterfat. We have always been strong promoters of high BF. Economics justify it and it allows the cattle to mature and develop instead of requiring high pounds of milk of young cows.

The current sires being used are Durham, Advent, Lheros, Carisma, Talent, Boss Iron and Primetime.

Due to the number of sales which we have had a several of the cow families have been marketed. But the families which are prominent are Star Maiden, she is the EX-93 Stardust which was nominated Jr All American twice for our daughter Jordan, then the Christine family, she is the VG-88 Leduc from Don-A-Dale Jet Crystal EX-CAN 4E *3 Star that was All Canandian or Res All American as a 4 yr old, 5 yr old, Aged and Mature Cow; her Rubens daughter sold for $17,000 at our 2006 sale and then our “I” Family which started with Willows Edge Banner Ione EX 2E DOM whom was a tremendous transmitting cow that has 12 daughters that are high VG or EX.

Holstein World: For a deeper look at Willows Edge as we begin this week of guest blogging, visit their website at www.holsteinworld.com/willowsedge!

This entry was posted on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 10:24 am by sschmidt and is filed under Guest Blogger Series. Hits for this post:1373 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.