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October 2004

I’ve probably been tinkering with the crossbred thing a good 15 to 18 years," Norman H. Martin told recent visitors to Martin Dairy, located on the southern border of that famous cheesemaking town of Tillamook, Oregon. "We have always had the crossbreds."

Crossbreds for fertility. Crossbreds for calving ease. Crossbreds for more fat and protein. That’s why they were born, and for all of those reasons they have put a little more money into the checking account of Martin Dairy.

There’s a lot of crossbreeding going on these days, creating great demand for Jersey semen and Jersey bulls. However, there’s something more going on with the Cal-Mart herd. The 95 or so cows and heifers that have recorded ancestors of two breeds are anything but "just crossbreds." They are on the track to becoming all Jersey, through the American Jersey Cattle Association’s Jersey Expansion program.

The story of how Martin, a third-generation Holstein dairyman whose homestead dairy was near Hanford, Calif., became a Jersey milk producer is truly unique.

"I started using Jersey bulls on our Holsteins as a conception improver," Martin said, recalling research at Washington State University that showed conception could be increased by 3% to 5% by putting two bulls together. "Because all of my Holsteins were registered—and there were 1,900 of those, and I didn’t want to go through the trouble of bleeding the calf and bleeding the dam to register the calves—I figured if I used a Jersey bull, at least I’d still have a milk cow."

"When I started using the two breeds together," he continues, "I was a little bit concerned about who I was going to breed the crossbreds back to. I wasn’t getting into the Jersey business at the time, so I thought the best thing to do is breed them to another crossbred such as themselves. I raised a crossbred bull calf, collected him and slaughtered him, and used the semen on our crossbreds to maintain the 50-50 mix."

About the same time, Martin’s cooperative was considering cheese yield pricing. "Being involved at Select Sires (on the Holstein sire committee), I used to go sit in on the Jersey meetings and see what was going on," he says. "I thought that this was going to happen, so I actually went out and started to get into the Jersey business. I got up to 250 head for about a year and a half. All of a sudden, the cheese yield thing never came to be, so I just got out of the Jerseys at that time. But I never lost my interest in them."

Then, in 1995, looking for a stable milk market, the Martin Family—Norm and wife, Gwen, plus son Chad and his wife, Fran, and daughter Rhonda and her husband Fernando Silveira—dispersed the majority of the Holstein herd and moved to the northern Oregon coast. "We brought about 80 Holsteins and went out to buy the Jerseys because at that time we didn’t own any. It took about a year or so to get up to 400 cows: 200 Holsteins and 200 Jerseys milking." And, of course, there were crossbreds.

When in early 1998 the Tillamook cooperative changed its pricing to reward higher fat and protein milk, "I decided we were going to go to all Jerseys. All of our Holstein heifers were sold. By December of 2001, we had sold off the balance of the Holstein cows we had left.

"I kept all of the crossbreds and started breeding them to Jersey sires, then registering them with the Association."

More than 250 animals with a Cal-Mart prefix have been recorded with the AJCA through Jersey Expansion. As J1s produced OAs, and OAs produced PRs, none have been particularly memorable to Martin. That’s not the case with the first GR-prefix calf, sired by DeBoer Jenetta Barber Bill-ET and born on August 1. "I know that one: 8177. That was our first 15/16ths."

On August 2, he applied for the calf’s registration via infoJersey, the AJCA’s online registration site, and her green-bordered certificate was in hand to show visitors in mid-August.

The crossbreds are a kaleidoscope of color, the palette influenced by whether or not one of those 50-50 bulls is somewhere in a cow’s background.

"When you have the double F1 cross on the backside of that pedigree," Martin observes, "two generations later, all of a sudden pops out this calf that looks just like a Holstein. I have not seen that when you go with the Jersey sires straight on the top.

"It’s only in looks and size. As far as the components, they continue to increase the same way."

There was a bit of trial-and-error along the way, says Martin, but he is certain of this:

"Anyone looking at crossbreeding really needs to be using the very good A.I. sires in the program. No doubt about it.

"One of the most important things that I have come to realize, is that in using the 50-50 cross young sire, I had no information and no way of ever knowing what he was going to be. Once I started getting the A.I. calves out of the crossbreds and sired by the good A.I. bulls, they were so much better than my ‘Barnyard Barney’ 50-50 bulls."

There was also trial-and-error as the Martins dealt with big and small cows in a rotary milking parlor.

"We had to look at it a lot," Martin recalls. "We had our rotary milking parlor set up for two breeds. When we brought in a string of Holsteins, we opened up the brisket bar and the Holsteins fit fine. When the Jersey cows came in, we pulled the brisket bar back and the Jerseys fit fine."

Over the three years it took to convert to the smaller Jerseys, there were as many as 40 of the larger 50-50 cross animals in a string of 150 Jersey cows. "There was no way to set that brisket bar for individual cows as they came in. We finally had to get rid of them."

"Now the 3/4ers are small enough," Martin comments. "They’re starting to get closer to the Jersey size where they fit on the rotary." The 7/8ths generation coming into production this year fit just fine.

There’s no question in Norm Martin’s mind about the value to him of identifying these animals in the AJCA Jersey Expansion program.

"I realize that there are people who carry a ‘title’ as being ‘registered breeders.’ I look at it somewhat differently.

"We register everything. We score every cow. We contribute to Equity. We are on the REAP program."

All of them are "like building blocks" with the first two giving him access to JerseyMateTM.

"I use the mating service at Jersey because I don’t think that I will ever live long enough to know the Jersey breed the way I knew the Holstein breed. My bull selection leans toward cheese yield. Inbreeding is a real concern. It figures out what bulls we are going to use so that I don’t have to worry about it.

"Those are the tools that I use to improve the herd."