Holstein World: Share with our readers a little bit about your background. What experiences and achievements have brought you to your position as the Secretary - Manager of the Canadian Milking Shorthrn Society and Publications Editor for Jersey Canada?

Ryan Barrett: I am from a family farm in Belmont, Prince Edward Island on Canada’’s east coast. For years we have had a high-performance herd of Milking Shorthorns, and have recently added a few Jerseys. We currently milk about 38 Shorthorns and 5 Jerseys, with 8 of the Milking Shorthorns classified Excellent. The farm is Oceanbrae Farms and you can visit our website at www.geocities.com/oceanbraefarms.

I have always been very interested in the Milking Shorthorn breed, thoroughly convinced that they have a definite place in the dairy industry. When doing my Bachelor’’s Degree at Nova Scotia Agriculture College, I was able to become involved in the CMSS in a communications role, initially responsible for the Society’’s website. After completing my Master’’s degree in Animal Breeding at the University of Guelph (where my project dealt with international evaluation of Milking Shorthorns), I was appointed as Secretary-Manager of the CMSS. I had also applied for a fulltime position with Jersey Canada as publications manager, and I was lucky enough to get that position. I continue to work full time as the publications editor for Jersey Canada, with my Milking Shorthorn duties being a part-time responsibility on evenings and weekends primarily.

Holstein World: What are the current stats of the Canadian Milking Shorthorn Society - approx. # of members, cows, etc.? What are the key responsibilities of the association to its members?

Ryan Barrett: The CMSS currently has about 60 members, and this number is growing in recent years. Given the size of the Canadian dairy industry, this size is proportional to the size of the breed in the United States. The CMSS registers between 250-300 head per year, but this is also increasing, as more breeders gain interest in the Milking Shorthorn breed.

The main responsibilities of the CMSS to it’’s members are to provide registry for their animals, as well as helping to market the breed and grow markets for their breeding stock.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 9:38 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.