Holstein World: What do you look for when selecting your heifers or cows for the upcoming show season? Are there any exciting prospects on the horizon for 2007?

Natzke Family: When selecting our show heifers we look for stylish dairy heifers with the potential to make good cows. The last few years we”ve been trying to buy heifers out of the breeds” better cow families. We know there are no guarantees that they will calve to be show cows, but we feel with sound type and deep pedigrees the potential is there to merchandise them and/or their offspring. We look forward to every show season with 2007 being no exception. It might be too early to tell, however we have several off age calves including an October Red Distrigene from 6 VG & EX. The best calf we currently own is a December calf in partnership with Chad & Mark Ryan and will be selling in the Dogeramma on April 7th. A Gibson Fall Yearling, which consistently stood in the top 10 last year is looking good, as is Kyle’’s Red Advent Fall Yearling. Lylehaven Gypsum-VG-86, the Reserve Jr All-American Fall Yearling in Milk 2006, was First Fall Yearling in both the Open and Jr Shows at Louisville last fall and is due in late July with a Stormatic heifer calf. Her January Roy calf is also one we are keeping an eye on.

Holstein World: Is there anything else you”d like to share?

Natzke Family: We would like to thank all of the people who house and care for our cattle on a daily basis. Without them, none of the success our cattle have achieved would have been possible. We would also like to say thank you to the Holstein World for allowing us to share our story and comments as a guest blogger. This truly was an honor.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 23rd, 2007 at 9:04 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.