Breeding Profile

John Schaller
Morning Star Dairy
Onalaska, Wisconsin
500 cows

Describe your facilities and list your breeding management team. Our cows are milked in a double-10 parallel parlor that we built three years ago. The cows are housed in 4-row, sand-bedded freestall barns. Our breeding management team includes Judd Hanson, who does the mating, and Brad Gollnik, who does the arm service and the ovsynch.

What is your current pregnancy rate? Our current pregnancy rate is 25%.

What is your reproduction program? We do herd health on Mondays and breed cows on Thursdays. 93% of our cows are bred from ovsynch. Our cows are bred using A.I.

Describe your breeding philosophy. I never use young sires. We use proven bulls and usually the top bulls. We have not purchased an animal in 30 years.

What guidelines do you follow to reach the goals for your breeding program? We breed cows to Holstein bulls up to four times, and if they do not get pregnant, then we use beef semen. We have done this for many years. A lot of our heifers only get bred to Holstein twice before trying with beef. By doing this, we breed out the problem breeders. We do take into consideration the time of year and the effect it may have on cows settling. We do matings three times a year.

What are the top traits you look for in breeding your dairy herd and how has this changed since you started farming? We always look at feet and legs and udder composites. This has continued to change over the years. We are getting toward shorter-statured animals.  
What are certain traits you try to avoid? Tall animals, poor feet, poor udders and cows that are too narrow.

Describe the ideal cow for your herd. Not too tall, good feet and legs, and not too set or straight-legged but a happy medium.

What role does genetics have in reaching the goals of your farm? Breeding plays a big role in reaching the goals of our farm. Our main things are excellent quality feed, comfortable cows and good genetics.

What percentage of your herd is bred to sexed, conventional and beef semen? We just started using sexed semen a few months ago, but we use very little. We prefer to use conventional semen because we have plenty of cows.
   We use approximately 93% Holstein conventional semen, 2% sexed Holstein semen and 7% Angus.

What is your conception rate? How does this differ with different types of semen? Our conception rate is 50%. Overall, there are two services per conception. It does not vary by much between conventional, sexed or beef semen.

What is the greatest lesson you have learned through your breeding program? It pays to use good bulls. When I first started milking cows in 1986, I had jumper bulls. I had a really good cow that made 21,000 pounds of milk. Back then, that was a big deal. That’s when I realized the importance of genetics and went to A.I.

What is the age of your heifers at first service? 15 months.


How does your heifer inventory affect your breeding program? We usually have too many heifers so we need to start using more beef.

Tell us about your farm. My grandparents moved here in the 1930s. My dad took over in 1947. I started renting the farm in 1984 and bought the buildings and 20 acres in 1986. We now own 620 tillable acres and rent a couple hundred more. We milk three times a day and are proud of a tremendously low somatic cell count with an average below 50,000. Our cows average 95 pounds per day. My youngest son, Cameron, farms with me full time.