Nelson Zandbergen
Farmers Forum
MOUNTAIN — Members of the Velthuis family at Vriesdale Holsteins in Mountain will officially pick up their first Master Breeder shield in Montreal later this month. And the women in the family have been key to the achievement, co-owner Robert Velthuis says.
“Like anything, to get these awards you’ve got to have people who love working with cows. And I got lucky, my wife loves cows as much as I do,” says Robert Velthuis, who farms with his wife, Katherine, along with his parents, Henry and Rita (nee Friezen).
Vriesdale was established by Robert Velthuis’s Dutch-immigrant maternal grandparents — Alphonse and Marie Vriezen — in the 1950s. It’s the farm where Robert grew up, as did his mother, Rita, before him. The place gets its name from the first five letters of the Vriezen surname, swapping the ‘z’ for an ‘s’ before the common “dale” appended to many farm names of the era.
Robert also lauds his mother (now retired) for “playing a big part” in getting the farm on the path to earning its first Master Breeder Shield from Holstein Canada, after she and her husband took over the farm in the late 1970s.
“Grandma would be proud, too,” Robert adds, referring to the late Marie. “She passed away last year. She liked the cows, just like my mom likes the cows.”
Perhaps more important, Vriesdale wouldn’t be a dairy farm today if not for grandma Marie’s insistence. His grandfather, Alphonse, was “a tractor guy” and in poor health in the year prior to his death in 1979, Robert said “He was feeling ill and wanted to sell the cows, but Grandma said, ‘No, we’re keeping them,’ and that’s the reason the cows stayed.’”
Holstein Canada has recognized Vriesdale, with a 150-head milking herd, as a Master Breeder in the large herd category.
“We have a high production herd, so we got a lot of points for production, and lately we’ve got a lot of high-scored cows, so that helped us too,” Robert says.
More than 1,100 Master Breeder shields have been handed out in the program’s 93 years. Shields are awarded based on points for balanced breeding with high production, outstanding conformation, and great reproduction, health, and longevity.
Robert attributes about a third of Vriesdale’s points to the genetics of the original herd predating his return to the farm after graduating college in 2000. The remainder of their cows’ lineage is split between a neighbouring herd the family purchased in 2003, and newer genetics they’ve bought in the last 20 years.
“We just want good, honest cows,” he says of their breeding philosophy. “That’s my wife’s theory. “If I have (a cow), and don’t know I have you, you’re a great cow. Problem-free, cows that do the job every day is what we strive for.”
He adds, “I want good, functional, profitable cows that look good doing it. As my wife says, we’re greedy, we want it all. We want the cow that milks right, and we want the cow that milks like hell.”
They knew they were in the running before Holstein Canada announced the 2022 Master Breeder recipients via Zoom in January, but confirmation still came as a surprise during the online session.
“We’re just really happy. It’s nice getting recognition,” he says, adding it’s affirmation for “doing it our way” at Vriesdale,
Lactanet has also ranked the operation as the top-managed herd in Dundas County for 5 of the last 6 years.
Getting the shield is a little like “winning the Stanley Cup” for a dairy farmer, he says. Upon return from Montreal, he will find a prominent place for it inside the house, not the barn, “so I can look at it while I eat breakfast.”
