Holstein World: Describe the breeding program of Hilmar Holsteins & Cranehil Genetics. What attributes do you focus on and what are the current service sires that you are using? Who are the key cow families that you are working with?

Ryan Matheron: At Hilmar Holsteins we strive to breed a herd of cows that excel in production as well as type. When selecting bulls to use in our operation we look for that same protocol including feet and legs, udders, and secondary traits. We are currently using bulls like Mac, Baxter, Frosty, Doleman, Pontiac, Airraid, Billion, Lou, Toystory and Shottle. Some of the key cow families we are presently working with are the Laurie Sheiks, Ravens, Delilias, and Hillarys. We also have some exciting homebred families we are working on developing. At this present time out of our 1700-milking Hilmar herd there are just over 200 registered cows. There are 16 Excellents, 65 Very Goods and 76 Good Plus cows.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 8:13 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.