Lester-PP - Stockholders

Holterholm Blackjack Lester-PP

JEUSA000173230093

Born: May 2017

aAa: 312-465 - A2A2 - BB/BB - BBR 100

Homozygous Polled

Lester is a gem that we didn’t think made it. His dam — the most maternal cow we’ve ever known — came to the barn one morning with two other cows who had calved that morning. By the next day we figured out that she had freshened, too, and we assumed the calf had died. We went in the woods and found him alive and quite well — he bolted out of the woods as if on an energy drink. Leslie had been taking care of him secretly for at least 24 hours. Maternal cows make milk and have tremendous will to live and reproduce.

His dam’s maternal line is long-living, healthy and pleasant cows to have in the barn. Her dam is still milking at 13 years old, and had a calf every year until she was 12 years old, on perennial grass only, with no supplementation other than mineral. Her granddam is the same granddam to Lester’s sire, and was also a long-living, productive and fertile cow. Lester’s sire’s dam had a lifetime butterfat of 5.5% with 3.6% protein. Lester’s dam produced 6.6% butterfat and 4.1% protein in her first lactation. (We do not have good DHIA records for her after that because she was an incredibly attentive nurse cow.)

Lester is a dairy bull, through and through. He’s not as capacious as some of our other bulls, but we expect him to not weaken strength, capacity or sturdiness in his daughters, because those traits are also deeply line-bred into him. His sire was the herd sire Holterholm Farm for four years, and is incredibly balanced and has “smooth” as his most prominent trait, and so that is part of Lester’s prepotency. The incredible productivity, length of life and fertility of all the dams in Lester’s pedigree speaks for itself, and those are the kinds of traits that come through in quality breeding. We’ve used him heavily on sturdy animals that need length of leg, dairy form and openness in the rear (room for an udder). So confident we are of his overall soundness despite his somewhat heavy 321 characteristics that we have also elected to use him on some horned animals who are not overly sturdy or strong, but out of whom we want polled offspring, because we are confident he will not detract from existing strength or structural soundness. Although we have had zero calving issues with his offspring, Lester tends to throw larger calves than some of the other bulls in the catalog. They look a week old at birth and function commensurately. I would not use this bull on a cow lacking in strength, however. Lester is a very easy-going bull, but his mother was a more nervous cow. He seems to have gotten his sire’s dam’s calm disposition.

*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.