Kristofer-P - Stockholders

Holterholm Lieutenant Kristofer

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Born: August 2018

aAa: 342-615 - A2A2 - BB/BB - BBR 100

Heterozygous Polled

We bred heavily to Kristofer a few years ago and we are really glad we did. We haven’t committed to using a single bull on heifers for a number of years, but Kristofer was an easy choice. Five of the six animals we bred him to had drastically improved milk let-down (even with calf-sharing) in their daughters. And the sixth is showing signs she will improve in her second lactation with this important trait.

The only thing that has kept us from using Kristofer more is that he isn’t really a belly bull, and a lot of cows, even in our program, still need more belly for grazing capacity. But every other thing about him seems to overwhelm this one deficit, and after milking his daughters — with high, tight and capacious udders — and experiencing their really nice dispositions, we absolutely will be using him a lot more.

He is a fine balance of strength and dairy traits, and he will work well in a variety of circumstances. He is the bull to choose for cows needing fertility, strength, and higher, wider and more supple udders. Kristofer started showing his strength as a very young calf when we were having trouble in extreme summer heat with a pathogen in some non-dried sawdust bedding, and he got a navel infection and had a 107 degree fever that persisted for days and days — we had to keep him cool with a hose every afternoon. Remarkably, he pulled through without any noticeable or lasting damage to his vitality . Strength is as strength does. The most accurate test of strength in any animal is what kind of challenge can the organism endure without damage. A lesser animal certainly would have died, and Kristofer came out unscathed. And it’s no wonder. Tracing his pedigree back 50 years, there many, many generations of quality animals.

Kristofer is line-bred on both sides of his pedigree to Beledene Dukes Landy, and he’s also line-bred on both sides to Sunarchus, a bull bred by Dr. John Reber of the NorthCoast group that produced a lot of nice daughters and was the sire of Holterholm Lieutenant. Lieutenant is Kristofer’s sire and the sire of his maternal granddam. (Sunarchus also appears as the maternal granddam of Cornelia, Kristofer’s maternal great-granddad and herself a Landy daughter. Landy appears in Kristofer’s pedigree four times in the first five generations.) And there is no arguing with the longevity of the Lieutenant’s influence on grassfed dairying in the US. He was an exceptional bull with the kind of daughter’s you’d like a whole herd of.

Kristofer’s dam is a really pleasant cow that doesn’t stand out, in a good way. She’s healthy, content and does her job without fuss (we ask a lot of our cows — to be a milk cow and to raise a calf — and some of them are real drama queens about it, but not Kris). She has a nice udder, breeds back and is a cow we’d like more of. Her averages for her fourth lactation are: 5.5% butterfat and 4.1% protein. Keep in mind that cows can and do hold back butterfat for their calves, and Kris does it less than other cows, but without a calf on her she would likely have a butterfat of around 6%. She completed her 3rd lactation with a SCC average of 38,000.

*There is a minimum order of three conventional straws per cow. The shipping cost is significant & having one extra is better than needing another shipment.

*For a $10 discount per straw, order five or more straws of the same bull (discount will automatically be applied in your cart).

*There is no minimum for purchasing sexed straws. We recommend purchasing a minimum of three straws, whether conventional, sexed or a combination. If breeding multiple cows, you can round down somewhat because hopefully the law of averages means at least one of your cows settles on the first service, freeing up other straws for multiple services. You can use any additional straws next year.

**TO AVOID an extra charge of $150 for a complete nitrogen refill, you must return the tank within the 2 week timeframe stated in the return instructions.
***Tanks that are not returned are subject to a $1500 replacement fee.