Creeping over fields of green Remembering the
faces The moments unseen The hands that built
a dynasty The vision in their eyes Echoes in
the auction bar Beneath an endless sky This is
the bull buy Turn the bar Welcome to the Bullvine
Podcast, where dairy industry insight meets the
stories that shape the breed. I'm your host,
and whether you're in the barn at 4 a .m., driving
between farms, or catching up after evening chores,
you're in the right place. This is the podcast
for dairy producers who want more than surface
-level coverage. We dig into the genetics, the
economics, the history, and the hard decisions
that define this industry. No fluff. No corporate
spin, just real talk for real dairy professionals.
Let's get into it. You're standing in a packed
sale ring in 1985. 2 ,500 people press against
the rails around you. The air is thick with cigarette
smoke and anticipation, the kind of electric
tension you only feel when history is about to
happen. The auctioneer's voice has been climbing
for 20 minutes. You've watched the number on
the board pass figures that would buy a decent
farm in most counties. Five hundred thousand.
Seven hundred thousand. Eight. And then it crosses
a million dollars. The crowd goes silent. You
can hear your own heartbeat. A million dollars.
For one cow. Then a hand goes up in the back.
Stephen Roman. The uranium billionaire. The man
who built Romandale into an empire. His hand
rises one more time. One million. Four hundred
fifty thousand dollars. But here's the thing
you don't know yet, standing in that sale ring.
This moment. This impossible, absurd, magnificent
moment didn't start in 1985. It started 60 years
earlier, in 1926 in a different sale ring, when
a 69 -year -old insurance executive did something
that made the entire Holstein world think he'd
lost his mind. Picture yourself in a different
scene, a modest office in Quebec. Charts cover
every wall, milk weights, butterfat percentages,
daughter comparisons stretching back generations.
A man sits at a desk, coffee cooling beside him,
pencil -making notes in margins. TB. Macaulay
is about to write a check for $15 ,000 for one
bull. In an economy where farmers are still digging
out from the Great War, the old -timers will
call it insanity. They'll be wrong. Because virtually
every registered Holstein walking the planet
today, every cow in your barn, every heifer in
your neighbor's field, every elite donor in every
embryo program on three continents, carries that
bull's blood this is the story of four impossible
bets four breeders who ignored everything their
era believed four philosophies that built everything
you're breeding today and the question that might
change how you think about your own operation
i'm your host and this is the bullvine podcast
to understand what these four breeders accomplished
you need to understand the world they were working
in and that world looked nothing like the one
you know Close your eyes and step back. It's
1920. The Great War has just ended. You're standing
on a dairy farm in Ontario. Maybe your grandfather's
farm. Maybe your great -grandfather's. The barn
smells of hay and manure and the sharp sweetness
of fresh milk. You're milking by hand. Twice
a day. Every day. No exceptions. Your hands are
calloused in that specific way that comes from
wrapping around udders for hours. You know the
feel of a good letdown, the subtle signs of mastitis
before it shows in the bucket. There's no bulk
tank in your milk house. No pipeline. You pour
warm milk through a strainer into cans, load
them onto a wagon, and hope the cheese factory
down the road gives you a fair price. You have
no idea what your butterfat percentage is. You
have no way to measure it even if you cared.
And here's what matters. You're breeding blind.
You look at a bull. You look at his dam. maybe
his grandum if someone kept records. You make
a judgment based on confirmation, how he stands,
how he's built, whether he looks like a dairy
animal. And you hope. That's it. That's the entire
science of genetic improvement in 1920. Hope.
You've heard rumors of something called progeny
testing, the idea that you could evaluate a bull
by studying how his daughters actually perform
rather than how he looks. But it sounds like
theory. Academic nonsense. the kind of thing
professors talk about at agricultural colleges
while real farmers do real work. The Holstein
-Friesian Association won't formalize progeny
testing for another decade. DHIA record -keeping
exists, but it's scattered, inconsistent, nothing
like the comprehensive databases you take for
granted today. You read in the farm papers about
breeding operations in the United States and
Canada, names you've heard at cattle sales, Wealthy
men dabbling in dairy cattle the way other wealthy
men dabble in racehorses. You're not sure what
to make of them. And you're chasing volume. Everyone's
chasing volume. More milk, more milk, more milk.
That's the measure of a good cow. That's what
the factories want. That's what pays. You don't
think much about components, butterfat, protein,
solids. The pricing systems won't catch up to
that reality for decades. GLP -1 drugs and protein
premiums are science fiction that hasn't been
written yet. But somewhere, in a modest farm
in Quebec, a man who made his fortune calculating
insurance risks is looking at numbers. Running
probabilities. Treating cattle breeding like
the actuarial problem it actually is. And he's
about to do something that will change everything.
The world is changing fast in the 1920s. You
feel it even on your farm. Tractors are replacing
horses on some operations. Electricity is reaching
rural areas. The Model T has made the trip to
town something you can do in an afternoon instead
of a full day. But cattle breeding? That's still
stuck in the old ways. Intuition. Tradition.
His grandsire threw nice calves. You don't know
it yet, but four men are about to drag the industry,
kicking and screaming, into a different era.
An insurance executive who treats cows like probability
tables. An immigrant billionaire. who understands
that genetics without marketing is wasted potential,
a Holstein fieldman who believes one cow family
can change the world, and a partnership that
will prove the right collaboration multiplies
everything. Their philosophies will conflict,
their methods will diverge, but their genetics
will converge into something none of them could
have predicted. Every registered Holstein alive
today, including the ones in your barn. You're
walking the grounds of Mount Victoria Farm on
a spring morning in 1926. The land is unremarkable.
Historical accounts describe it as a sandy plot
that nobody expected much from. The buildings
are functional, nothing fancy. This doesn't look
like a breeding operation that's about to change
history. But you notice something different when
you step into the main house. The walls are covered
in charts. Milk weights going back years. Butterfat
percentages tracked across generations. Daughter
comparisons organized by sire. Cross -references
you've never seen anyone bother to compile. It
looks less like a farm office and more like an
insurance company's actuarial department, which
when you think about it, makes perfect sense.
Thomas Bassett. McCauley didn't grow up in cattle.
No family farm. No inherited wisdom about which
bloodlines nick well together. According to Sun
Life Corporate Histories, he built one of Canada's
largest insurance companies through rigorous
statistical analysis. Risk assessment. Probability
calculation. The mathematics of predicting outcomes
from incomplete data. And now he's applied that
same methodology to Holstein's. You watch him
work. He's 69 years old, but his mind is sharp
as a tack. He pulls a chart from the wall, traces
a lineage with his finger, makes a note in the
margin. You ask him what he's looking for. He
explains that he's solving for a specific value,
4 % butterfat. You almost laugh. Nobody's chasing
butterfat. Every farmer you know chases volume.
More milk equals more money. It's simple arithmetic.
But Macaulay shakes his head. He's run the numbers.
He's studied the pricing trends. He's looked
at where the market is heading, not where it's
been. And he believes component value will matter
more than total volume within a generation. You
think about this now, standing in your barn in
2025. With GLP -1 weight loss drugs shifting
consumer demand toward protein, with component
pricing dominating your milk check, with everyone
suddenly thinking about what's in the milk, not
just how much there is. Macaulay saw it coming.
In 1926, the word comes through the dairy papers
that Macaulay is looking at a bull. Johanna Rag,
Apple Pabst. People are calling him Old Joe.
The pedigree is impressive, but pedigrees alone
don't justify what Macaulay is considering. You
hear the rumored price, and you don't believe
it. $15 ,000. Let that sink in for a moment.
You're standing in 1926. The economy is shaky.
Farmers are still recovering from the post -war
crash. According to Bank of Canada inflation
calculations, $15 ,926 equals roughly $260 ,000
in today's money. For one bull, the old -timers
don't hold back. You hear them in the sale barn,
at the feed store, wherever cattlemen gather.
Macaulay's lost his mind. That insurance money
went to his head. No animal's worth that kind
of money. But Macaulay has done something none
of them bothered to do. He traced the butterfat
genetics through the pedigree. He analyzed Old
Joe's dam and grandum records. He calculated,
actually calculated, with the actuarial precision
that made him rich. The probability that this
bull would sire daughters hitting his 4 % target.
You watch him write the check. $15 ,000. His
hand doesn't shake. The results take time. You
have to wait for daughters to mature, to calve,
to complete lactations. This is before genomics.
Before you can test a calf at two weeks old and
know her potential. You're waiting years for
data. But the data comes. Holstein Canada production
records from the era tell the story. Old Joe's
daughters hit the 4 % butterfat target, consistently,
generation after generation. The concentrated
genetics Macaulay banked on are transmitting
exactly as his probability tables predicted.
And something else is happening, something even
Macaulay might not have fully anticipated. Old
Joe's genetics are spreading, his daughters breed
on, his sons enter service. The influence compounds
with each generation. spreading through the registered
Holstein population like ripples from a stone
dropped in still water. You think about your
herd today. Pull up any pedigree in your computer.
Go back far enough and you'll find him. Johanna
Rag, Apple Pabst, Old Joe, the bull everyone
said was too expensive. Holstein Canada pedigree
records confirm it. He appears in the ancestry
of essentially every animal in the modern registered
population. Every. Single. One. Next time you're
scrolling through bull proofs, remember what
you're actually looking at, not just numbers
on a screen. The echoes of a 69 -year -old insurance
executive who had the audacity to treat cattle
breeding like a math problem and got the answer
right. But Macaulay's data -driven approach was
just one philosophy, one way to build a breeding
program. While he was running his probability
tables in Quebec, other visions were taking shape,
different methods, different beliefs. The same
goal, building something that would last. Two
men, opposite approaches. One bought everything.
One bought one cow for $750. Both changed the
breed forever, just in completely different ways.
Let's talk about the one who bought everything
first. You're standing on a dock, watching ships
unload. It's the 1930s. Immigrants are pouring
into Canada, fleeing the chaos of Europe, seeking
opportunity in a new world. Most of them have
nothing. A few dollars, a suitcase, hope. One
of them is a young man from Slovakia named Stephen
Roman. You see him years later on an assembly
line at General Motors. Hands black with grease,
building cars for wages that barely cover rent.
Nothing about this moment suggests he'll become
one of Canada's richest men. Nothing suggests
he'll reshape the Holstein breed. But Stephen
Roman has something you can't see from the outside.
Ambition that burns like uranium. Uranium. That's
the key. Through a combination of opportunity,
risk tolerance, and maybe some luck, Roman gets
into mining at exactly the right moment. Denison
Mines becomes one of the largest uranium producers
in the world. And the immigrant who arrived with
nothing becomes a billionaire. Now imagine you're
a Holstein breeder in the 1960s. You've spent
your whole life building a herd cow by cow. You
know every bloodline. every cow family, every
subtle genetic quirk in your animals. And then
you hear about Romandale Farms. Stephen Roman
doesn't want to breed good cattle. He wants to
build an empire. He has the capital to buy the
best cattle in North America. And he does. Aggressively.
Relentlessly. The kind of checkbook breeding
that makes established breeders uncomfortable.
But Roman is smart enough to know his limitations.
You're walking through Romandale's show barn.
The cattle are immaculate. fitted and groomed
to perfection. But what catches your attention
is the man evaluating a heifer in the back pen.
Dave Houck, herd superintendent. You've heard
his name in Ontario breeding circles. People
describe him as having an almost spiritual connection
to Holsteins. You watch him work. He doesn't
say much, just looks, studies, moves around the
animal with a kind of focused intensity that
makes you hold your breath. An old -timer once
told you that watching Hauk evaluate a heifer
was like watching a sculptor see the statue inside
the marble. Now you understand what he meant.
Money plus cow sense. Roman brought the capital.
Hauk brought the eye. That combination is almost
unbeatable. You're standing at the Royal Winterfair.
The supreme champion has just been announced.
Romandale cattle again. Another banner. Another
victory. But you notice something about Roman
as he accepts the honors. He's not celebrating
the win itself. He's watching the crowd's reaction.
He's clocking which buyers are paying attention.
He's calculating the impact on his next sale.
The show ring isn't about ribbons. It's marketing.
You hear him explain it to a group of breeders.
Through the show ring, he says, lay the path
to the Holstein mountaintop. Every supreme champion
is brand equity. Every Royal Winterfair banner
builds the Romandale mystique, and mystique drives
demand. Perception becomes reality. And his sale
tactics? You've seen them copied ever since.
Elite females sold in pairs on choice. Highest
bidder picks one, Romandale keeps the other.
He gets record prices and retains genetics. The
man understands both sides of the sale ring in
a way that seems unfair. The crown jewel enters
the ring in 1964. Romandale reflection marquee.
You've heard him described as the white male
monster. Not affection, exactly. More like grudging
respect mixed with a little fear. He's massive.
Powerful. Something about him commands attention
in a way that's hard to articulate. The bidding
climbs. You watch the numbers pass. Figures that
would buy a good farm. $20 ,000. $25 ,000. $30
,000. $37 ,000. Curtis Breeding Service. Final
bid. Someone near you describes watching Marquis
enter the ring. said, you could feel the air
change in the building. Everyone knew they were
seeing something special. His genetics will spread
across North America. His influence will echo
for generations. But here's what Roman teaches
you that matters beyond the sale prices and the
show banners. Great genetics need great marketing.
You think about this now, about successful embryo
programs with strong social media presence, about
breeders who understand that perception drives
demand. about live -streamed sales reaching three
continents. Roman figured this out in the 1960s.
The rest of the industry is still catching up.
But while Roman was building his empire through
acquisitions and marketing brilliance, another
man was proving that you didn't need millions.
You didn't need to buy the best. You just needed
to find one cow, the right cow, and have the
patience to build everything from her. They called
him the Holstein Man's Holstein Man. And if you
spent time around Ontario dairy circles mid -century,
you understood why. Roy Ormiston didn't have
Stephen Roman's billions. He didn't have T .B.
McCauley's actuarial tables. What he had was
30 years of walking through other people's barns.
You're following Ormiston on his rounds as a
Holstein Canada field man. This is the job, visiting
farms, evaluating cattle, helping breeders understand
conformation and type. Hundreds of herds. Thousands
of cattle. Year after year. You watch him work.
He doesn't use a scorecard, not really. He looks
at an animal and something happens behind his
eyes. An assessment that integrates confirmation,
structure, constitution, and something else.
Something you can't quite name. I like to compare
a dairy cow to a building, he explains to you
during a long drive between farms. If you don't
have a very good foundation, then it isn't going
to stand up too long. You think about this. Foundation.
The base everything else builds on. He's not
talking about confirmation scores or classification
points. Not exactly. He's talking about something
deeper. The genetic core that transmits across
generations. The invisible architecture that
determines whether a cow family rises or fades.
Most breeders, Ormiston tells you, chase the
latest thing. The hot new sire. The trendy bloodline.
They're always looking outside their own herds
for the next great improvement. He's going to
do something different. He's going to find one
cow, the right cow, and build everything from
her. It's 1956. You're at a modest sale. Nothing
like the grand Romandale spectacles. The cattle
coming through are decent, nothing special. You're
about ready to head home. Then you see Ormiston
pause at a pen in the back. Balsam Bray, Pluto
Sovereign. The sale catalog lists her at $750.
An afterthought price. She's not the cow everyone's
talking about. She's not flashy. She's not commanding
attention. But Ormiston is staring at her like
he's found something precious. You look at the
cow. You try to see what he sees. She's put together
well, sure, good structure, sound constitution,
but so are dozens of other cows in this sale.
What is it about this one? Ormiston doesn't fully
explain. Some combination, he says, of structure
and constitution and something else. Call it
transmitting ability. Call it prepotency. The
ability to stamp daughters with quality regardless
of the sire. Whatever it is, he believes the
white cow has it. $750. He takes her home. You're
watching the Roibrook program develop over years.
This is the part most people don't have patience
for. The long wait between genetic decisions
and visible results. Ormiston breeds the white
cow to different bulls across several calvings.
He watches daughters develop. studies how they
mature, tracks their production, notes their
confirmation, and something becomes clear. It
was then I realized, he tells you one evening
in his kitchen, that no matter what she was bred
to, the white cow would always produce a good
daughter. That's when I knew I could line breed
on her. The words hit you like a revelation.
If she throws excellence regardless of the sire,
you can concentrate her genetics without fear.
You can build on what you have instead of constantly
chasing what you don't. That insight is the Roybrook
program. The names start appearing in sale catalogs
and breed publications. Roybrook Doralee Doreen.
Roybrook Doralee Dorame. Daughters. Granddaughters.
The family tree branching and flourishing. And
then the sons. The bulls that will carry the
white cow's genetics across the world. Telstar.
Starlight. Tempo. You see their names everywhere.
semen catalogs, show pedigrees, production records.
The influence spreads across North America, then
across the Atlantic, then across the Pacific.
Telstar's impact in Japan is so profound that
something unprecedented happens. Japanese breeders
erect a life -size bronze statue in his honor,
a statue for a Canadian bull, built on the foundation
of a $750 cow that nobody at that 1956 sale thought
twice about. The statue still stands today. You
think about this in the context of your own operation.
The genomic age offers more tools than Ormiston
could have imagined. You can sort embryos by
sex, screen for dozens of recessives, select
for indexes that didn't exist five years ago.
The technology is miraculous. But Ormiston's
lesson wasn't about tools. It was about conviction.
Find the cow family that works. Have patience
to build on it. Stick with what works. and it
keeps working. Some of the most successful programs
you see today do exactly that. Not chasing every
new sire topping the rankings. Not abandoning
maternal lines when the next hot trend appears.
Developing, building, generation after generation.
The way Ormiston built everything from one cow.
Three philosophies now. Data, marketing, conviction.
But there's one more piece. One more bet that
will complete the picture. And it will prove
something the others couldn't. That the right
partnership doesn't just add skills, it multiplies
them. You're watching a convoy pull into a 300
-acre farm in Port Perry, Ontario. Cattle trailers
from New York, equipment trucks, two men supervising
the unload with the focused intensity of people
starting something they intend to be permanent.
Peter Heffering, Ken Trevina. They've already
built reputations south of the border, but they're
moving north, starting fresh. Building something
new. Hanover Hill Holsteins. We didn't set out
to create a dynasty, Heffering will say later.
Our aim was simple. Breed the best Holsteins
in the world. Simple. Just breed the best Holsteins
in the world. Nothing complicated about that.
Rye acknowledgement of the audacity. Daily operations
at Hanover Hill. SFX. Pre -dawn barn sounds.
Cattle stirring. Equipment starting. You're standing
in the Hanover Hill barn at 1am. the first milking
shift. Ken Trevina is already there. This is
his domain, the hands -on work, the daily evaluation.
He's watching heifers move through the parlor,
noting how they carry themselves, which ones
have that something extra in their stride and
their presence. By the time Peter Heffering arrives
with the day's marketing strategy, Trevina already
knows which animals are ready for their next
photo shoot, which ones are developing into show
prospects. Which ones have the it factor that
translates into demand? They meet over coffee.
Decisions get made. Neither man holds the other
back. You've seen partnerships collapse over
the years. Egos clash. Visions diverge. Someone
feels undervalued or overruled. The best breeding
programs splinter and scatter when the people
behind them can't stay aligned. This one just
works. But here's what really sets Hanover Hill
apart. By the early 1970s, American geneticists
are pushing hard toward index -based evaluation.
Production numbers above all else. The computerization
of breeding decisions. If a bull's daughters
produce more milk, he's better. Simple as that.
Heffering calls it out publicly. You hear him
arguing with breeders and geneticists at industry
events. The indexes ignore what actually keeps
a herd profitable over time, he insists. Cow
families. Type. longevity, the ability to breed
on generation after generation without falling
apart. Sound familiar? The tension between index
chasing and holistic evaluation hasn't gone away.
It's just moved to genomic proofs. Same argument,
different decade. And Hanover Hill is betting
on the holistic side. The 1980s belonged to Hanover
Hill. You see them everywhere. Every major show.
Every elite sale. The consistency is almost unnerving.
140 All -American nominations. 87 all -Canadian
nominations. Numbers that nobody else comes close
to matching. From 1983 to 1988, they're premier
breeders at both the Royal Winterfair and World
Dairy Expo. Simultaneously. Consistently. Year
after year. Their marketing is relentless. But
it's not marketing for its own sake. It's marketing
backed by cattle that justify the promotion.
The Hanover Hill name becomes a brand that commands
premium prices because buyers have learned to
trust what it represents. And then comes 1985.
You're in the sale ring. 2 ,500 people packed
around you. Every seat filled. Every rail lined
with bodies. You've never seen a sale like this.
Brookview Tony Charity enters the ring. The bidding
starts. Climbs. Keeps climbing. You watch the
numbers pass figures that would buy a good farm.
A great farm. A whole operation. $500 ,000. 700
,000. Eight. And then it crosses a million. The
crowd goes silent. You can hear your own breathing.
A million dollars. For one cow. You're witnessing
something that's never happened before in Holstein
history. Then a hand goes up in the back. Stephen
Roman. The empire builder. The man who understood
that perception drives demand. His hand rises
one more time. One million. 450 ,000 dollars.
Two Holstein legends converging in a single moment.
Roman, the empire builder. Hanover Hill, the
partnership that rejected the numbers game. The
immigrant billionaire and the two men who moved
from New York to prove something about how cattle
should be bred. Charity changes hands. History
is made. But the crowning achievement isn't a
sale price. It's a bull. Hanover Hill's Starbuck,
a son of Round Oak Rag Apple Elevation, out of
Anachris Astronaut Ivanhoe. He combines everything
Heffering and Trevina demanded. Production, type,
cow family depth, the ability to transmit quality
generation after generation. His daughters milk.
They last. They breed on. Some breeders argue
he's the most influential Holstein sire in modern
history. The genetics flowing from Hanover Hill
through Starbucks descendants touch virtually
every major breeding program on the planet. Nine
class extra sires from one operation. a concentration
of top -tier bloodlines that no other single
program has matched. And it all traces back to
a partnership that worked because two men divided
their labor right and neither held the other
back. You're standing in your barn in late 2025.
The equipment around you would be unrecognizable
to T .B. McCauley, to Stephen Roman, to Roy Ormiston,
to Heffering and Trevina in their early years.
Robotic milkers, automated feeding, activity
monitors on every cow, Genomic testing that can
evaluate a calf's potential at two weeks old.
The technology is miraculous, but pull up any
pedigree on your computer, trace the bloodlines
back, and you'll find them. Old Joe. The $15
,000 bull Macaulay bet everything on. Romandale
Genetics. The empire Roman built through capital
and marketing genius. The white cow's descendants.
Ormiston's patient development of one family
over decades. Starbuck, the Hanover Hill Partnership's
crowning achievement. Every registered Holstein
in your barn carries pieces of all four philosophies.
Every heifer, every cow, every bull you've ever
used. They're all downstream of decisions made
by breeders who ignored what everyone else believed.
You're reviewing your breeding program, looking
at the numbers, the indexes, the genomic evaluations
that guide your decisions. And you start to see
the four philosophies everywhere. The Macaulay
approach, data -driven selection. You're running
numbers, tracking metrics, using herd management
software to optimize every decision. Rigorous
analysis, probability calculation. If the numbers
don't support it, you don't do it. The Roman
approach, great genetics need great marketing.
You think about your social media presence, your
sale listings, the perception your operation
projects to potential buyers. You know that genetics
without visibility is potential wasted. The Ormiston
approach. Find your cow family and commit. You
look at the maternal lines you've been developing,
the cow families you've stuck with through multiple
generations, the patience to build rather than
constantly chase. The Hanover Hill approach.
Partnerships and holistic thinking. You think
about who you work with, your nutritionist, your
veterinarian, your breeding advisors. the way
you divide labor and trust others to handle what
they handle best. Four philosophies still shaping
who succeeds. The tools are different. The principles
haven't changed. You walk through your barn at
evening chores. The cows are settled, chewing
cud, doing what cows do. Generations of careful
selection are embodied in these animals. And
you ask yourself the question, which combination
are you building? Because the producers you see
succeeding right now pull from all four approaches.
Data -driven decisions, marketing awareness,
commitment to maternal lines, strategic partnerships,
willingness to reject conventional wisdom when
it doesn't serve the cow. No single philosophy
is enough. The breed was built by breeders who
found their own synthesis. The question is what
synthesis you're creating. Let's be direct about
what these four bets teach us, not as history,
as operating principles. First, data beats intuition.
You think about Macaulay in his chart -covered
office, running probabilities, tracking daughter
comparisons, refusing to make decisions based
on his grandsire through nice calves. He was
right. The data was right. And his willingness
to trust the numbers over conventional wisdom
created influence that touches every Holstein
alive. If you're not using herd management software
to drive breeding decisions, you're leaving money
on the table. The tools Macaulay would have killed
for are sitting in your pocket right now. Use
them. Second, genetics without marketing is wasted
potential. Roman treated the show ring as advertising,
not trophies. He understood that perception drives
demand, that visibility multiplies value. In
2025, that's Instagram, live -streamed embryo
sales, social media presence, the ability to
tell your story to buyers on three continents
before they ever set foot on your farm. Great
genetics need great marketing. If you're breeding
elite cattle and nobody knows about it, you're
leaving value on the table. Third, one cow family,
total commitment. Ormiston bought a $750 cow
nobody wanted, built everything from her, earned
a bronze statue in Japan. Find your foundation,
the cow family that works for your operation,
your climate, your management style, and stop
chasing every shiny new sire topping the rankings.
Patience compounds. Conviction compounds. The
best programs you see develop maternal lines
generation after generation rather than constantly
starting over. Fourth, partnerships multiply
when you divide right. Trevina worked the 1 a
.m. milkings. Heffering ran strategy. Neither
held the other back. Think about your own operation.
Who handles what? Where are you trying to do
everything yourself when you should be trusting
someone else's expertise? Where is ego getting
in the way of effectiveness? The right partnership
doesn't just add skills, it multiplies them.
Fifth, and maybe most important, these aren't
history lessons, they're choices. Every breeding
decision you make reflects one of these philosophies,
or some combination, or none of them. The producers
struggling right now often have no clear philosophy
at all. They're reactive, chasing trends, making
decisions based on whoever talked to them last.
The producers succeeding have figured out their
synthesis. They know what they believe and why
they believe it. Same four choices. Different
tools. The philosophies that built the breed
are the philosophies that'll carry your operation
forward. Which combination are you building?
It's early morning. You're standing outside your
barn, coffee in hand, watching the sun come up
over your fields. Another day of decisions ahead.
Breeding choices. Marketing decisions. partnership
dynamics, data to analyze. Somewhere in your
herd, there's genetic material that traces back
to a 69 -year -old insurance executive who paid
$15 ,000 for a bull when everyone called him
crazy. Somewhere in those pedigrees, there's
influence from an immigrant billionaire who understood
that perception drives demand before anyone used
words like brand equity. Somewhere in those cow
families, there are echoes of a $750 purchase
that nobody thought twice about, except the man
who saw something nobody else could see. And
somewhere in the way you work, in the partnerships
you've built, there are lessons from two men
who moved from New York to Ontario and proved
that dividing labor right multiplies everything.
The legends left us the playbook. Four philosophies.
Four impossible bets. Every Holstein alive today.
The question isn't which one is right. They're
all right. They're all still valid. The breed
was built by breeders who found their own synthesis
of these approaches. The question is which combination
you're building. Because another generation of
breeders is waiting to inherit what we build.
And 50 years from now, someone might look back
at the decisions you're making today the way
we look back at Macaulay's impossible purchase,
Ormiston's patient conviction, Roman's marketing
mastery, Hanover Hills Multiplied Partnership.
What will they see? What will they learn? The
legends left us the playbook. Now it's your turn
to write the next chapter. Today's episode is
called Four Bets. The impossible gambles that
built every Holstein alive. In 1926, a 69 -year
-old insurance executive wrote a check for $15
,000 for a single bull. Everyone called him crazy.
Today, that bull's genetics run through every
registered Holstein on the planet. This is the
story of four breeders who ignored what everyone
else believed. Four philosophies that still shape
who succeeds in this industry. And a question
that might change how you think about your own
operation. Four bets, five legends. Everything
you're breeding today. Here we go. The quiet
strength they knew Hear their stories now Coming
right on through Oh tell the tale, tell the tale
The Beaumont legends lived here