Melarry Fuel rises to the top

RICE, Minn. – A Minnesota-bred Holstein bull recently achieved the breed’s pinnacle score of Excellent 97 at Semex in Canada.
Melarry Fuel-ET, one of only five Holstein bulls to ever reach that status in the history of Holstein Canada, achieved the status at 6 years old.
Fuel was bred by Spencer Hackett of Melarry Farms in Rice, home to a herd of 140 registered Holstein cows. Hackett operates the farm with his wife, Stacey, and their sons, Brook and Christopher, and their families along with his parents, Melvin and Darlene.
“It was a shock and exciting to hear the news,” Hackett said. “Fuel is the result of years and years of breeding by our family, produced by a cow family that is deep and consistent.”
Willemke Binnendijk, Holstein Canada’s director of on-farm experience for Ontario and the western provinces, was one of the classifiers involved in raising Fuel to Excellent 97.
“We classified 52 bulls that day at Semex, and Fuel was a standout among the bulls we saw,” Binnendijk said. “I was struck by his incredible size, width and strength; yet, he still shows much refinement. I was very impressed by how correct he is. We had him walk around a bit for us, and he moves very well. He was already scored 96 points, and it was not a hard decision to raise him to 97.”
Fuel hails from what Hackett describes as his herd’s bread-and-butter cow family. Fuel completes 12 generations of Melarry breeding, dating back to the early 1980s.
According to Hackett, Fuel is an example of what he has been working to accomplish throughout his career as a registered Holstein breeder. He calls his breeding philosophy diverse, explaining that his goal is to make bulls for all markets.
“Breeders are looking for a lot of different things; some want more moderate sized cows while others want more frame and style,” Hackett said of the markets he is trying to breed bulls to fit. “The main thing is they all have to produce a lot of milk. I am proud to Fuel achieve a classification score of EX-97 with 1700 pounds of milk on a proven bull proof.”
That focus on breeding for strength is one of the reasons Hackett loves the cow family Fuel hails from.
 “They are all very complete cows, and they all breed very true,” Hackett said. “They are the best cow family on the farm; they just never had quite high enough genetics in the days before genomics.”
Hackett is a believer in the science of genomics and how it relates to the animals he breeds.
“Genomics founded this herd,” Hackett said. “With the old (Total Performance Index), my cows were never high enough on deviation. When genomics first came along in 2007, we tested a few from that family and found their genomic information was way higher than their numbers in the old index system.”
Fuel descends from a family of 10 Excellent and Very Good dams with a sire stack that includes bulls such as Morningview MCC Kingboy, Mountfield SSI DCY Mogul, Charlesdale Superstition, Solid-Gold Colby, Keystone Potter, Calbrett-I H H Champion, Olmo Prelude Tugulo, Norrielake Cleitus Luke, Sir C Valor and Cal-Clark Board Chairman.
“Fuel’s fourth dam was a Colby, so we tried to catch a little index there and used Super on her,” Hackett said. “Then we flushed that cow to Mogul. Those calves hit the ground right about the time genomics came along. Those Moguls were all at the top of the breed.”
Keeping in line with his philosophy to sell only his best, Hackett sold the top Mogul daughter privately and sold the second highest in the World Classic Sale during World Dairy Expo. He kept the third of the three, which was Fuel’s granddam, to work with himself.
That Mogul was mated with Kingboy, producing Fuel’s dam.
“We bred the Kingboy to Duke,” Hackett said. “We had all the type, so we went with a big production bull.”
That mating produced two bull calves. Another stud chose what appeared to be the better calf, with better calving ease and health traits. Semex eventually took the other calf – Fuel.
Fuel himself is an S-S-I Montross Duke-ET from Melarry Kingboy Fudgie-ET, an Excellent Kingboy daughter of Melarry Mogul Freck-ET EX-90 DOM.
“Fuel came back with a lot of milk and high calving ease,” Hackett said. “Then he got his proof and it was pretty good. He was the No. 2 (Lifetime Profit Index) bull in Canada for a while. He is still over 1,700 pounds of milk on his proof, which is pretty good.”
Hackett does not have many Fuel daughters in his herd right now but has heard good things from other breeders and industry professionals about them as a group.
“I had a Holstein USA classifier tell me once he saw a group of Fuel daughters in California,” Hackett said. “He said they were big, strong front-ended cows, really good, sound, functional cows, milking really well.”
The reports that Hackett has heard about Fuel daughters come as no surprise to him, knowing Fuel’s heritage.
“My grandpa always told me not to force the cream to the top, just let it rise to the top,” Hackett said. “That is how you know you’re working with the good ones.”