It was a day of tours, fun, food and fellowship in Michigan for those attending the National Holstein Convention in Traverse City, Michigan, on Sunday, July 1. The second day of convention included tours of a trip to Leelanau Peninsula & Catamaran Cruise or Leelanau Peninsula & Tall Ship Excursion, the Sleeping Bear Dunes Sightseeing & Activities Tour or Floating the Platte River and Experiencing Slipping Bear Dunes and the final option was touring four Michigan dairy farms.
Farm Tours
Michigan Holstein Breeders outdid themselves with awesome hospitality exhibited at every farm visited today. They included Ber-Sher Farms, Bosscher Dairy, Hidden Hills Dairy and Yonkman Dairy all located in the McBaine area.
Ber-Sher Farms is owned by Ron Brinks and Family. They milk 220 cows with an RHA of 29,862M. The herd is 100% registered.
Bosscher Dairy is owned by Michael Bosscher and the Farm Manager is Joe Kulhawick. They milk 275 head with an RHA over 26,900M in a double-12 Herringbone. The herd is 65-75% registered. Lunch was served to the tour as well.
Showcase Cows
Several farms in the state brought in a few of their best to showcase at the Bosscher Farm. They included Green Meadows, Lamoreaux/Vanderploeg, Paramount Enterprises, Raterink Farm, Reed Bros. Dairy, Star-Summit Farm, Starward Farm, Touchdown Dairy, Tumbleweed Dairy and Westvale-View Dairy (MOO-ville).
The Brian and Phil Brunink family at Hidden Hills Dairy milk 950 cows with a herd average of 28,501M. The herd is 50% registered and milked in a double-20 parlor. Their facility was just recently built in 2016 and incorporates a Sand Lane Manure system with Manure Vacuum Truck.
Yonkman Dairy is owned by Sam and Denise Yonkman Family. They milk 750 cows with a 28,320M herd average in a new 40-cow carousel parlor with robot post-teat sprayer.
The Yonkman Family had visitors pin their locations, it was fun to see all the dots across the U.S. of visitors.
Sand Dunes
Block Party
The weather wasn’t quite cooperative with heat in the mid-90s so the outside event was moved inside except for a few of the junior activities a bit later after dinner. Keynote speaker was 2-time Olympian Lindsay Tarpley a former US Women’s Soccer National Team member. Following dinner and her talk on promoting dairy, adults enjoyed dueling pianos and the youth enjoyed some energy spending activities including bounce houses, rock wall, corn hole and rousing games of bubble soccer before the thunderstorm chased them inside.
Continuing through the week is the Silent Auction (check out the Holstein World Facebook page), the trade show and more. The Annual Meeting begins on Monday with the National Convention Sale Monday evening.
More coverage and award results will be posted in the August issue of the Holstein World.
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