Bullseye March 2015

Benner Holsteins Ltd: Breeding Brood Cows & Bulls

Benner Holsteins Ltd. is a name known far and wide for the cows bred by the Penner family on their Steinbach, Manitoba farm. The farm began 60 years ago when Ben Penner started with 11 cows, and three generations of the family have worked to build it to what it is today, 1000 cows on 1700 acres of land. Over the years Don & Shirley Penner shared ownership of the farm with his father, his 3 brothers and now with his sons, Tim and Scott. The herd began registering in 1971 and daughter Laurie Funk remains involved in the family farm by looking after that task today, no small feat when you consider how many ‘J’ names she needs to create!

In addition to the immediate family, 2 of Don’s brothers and 3 employees work on the farm. The herd includes 350 milking cows, of which 240 are milked in a 5 year old barn with 4 Lely robots and 110 are milked in the tie-stall.

Benner Holsteins was recognized with their first Master Breeder Shield in 2001, and achieved their second in impressive fashion immediately following the minimum 14 years that must pass between awards. How does a herd that doesn’t make pursuit of a Master Breeder Award their ultimate goal achieve this feat, you ask? The Penner’s recipe is one of aggressive genetic improvement through the regular use of all breed improvement tools and a lot of flushing, con- ventionally and in vitro, of their best females. The majority of cows contributing points to this shield were bred in the pre-genomic era. The strategy at that time was to fill the barn with sound cows sired by the best proven bulls (Rudolph, James, Progress, Leduc, Goldwyn and Manifold are mentioned as the ones that worked the best) from true transmitting cow families that would grow the herd so they could continue to expand the operation.

80-85% of the herd now traces their pedigree back to the prolific J family for which they are on the map. The 4 cows contributing the most points include Benner Luke Jean VG-85 24*, Benner Progress Jacinda GP-82 23*, Benner Aeroline Jemima VG-86 13* and Benner Goldwyn Jamarco VG-87 11*. The herd average is currently 10,241kg 3.38% fat and 2.92% protein. It includes 1 ME, 3 EX, 106 VG and 183 GP cows. Over the years, many cows were also sold into the US (29 of which scored Excellent and 41 Very Good), but aren’t eligible to contribute points to the shield. They also enjoy breeding some cows to show and consider them downright fun to work with. This love was further developed in Tim and Scott through 10 years of participation in the WCC program, while Don served as the Team Manitoba coach for 9 years. Don has also been President of the Manitoba Holstein Association.

In the genomic era, the Penners have embraced this new tool available to them and now use 95% young sires which they access as early as possible to fill contracts on their highest indexing heifers. Their criteria emphasizes production and herdlife while keeping conformation in mind, so they don’t lose what they’ve built into the herd. They spread their risk by using a wide variety of the top young bulls. The best heifers begin flushing by nine months, and the cows and lower ranked heifers are used as recipients. Having developed a large bull market, very little sexing is done, though when flushing a few cows that have proven their transmitting abilities, they’ve had good success using sexed semen to make more daughters from them. About 7 -10 bulls a year go to AI studs, with Benner Jerry being a Class Extra sire they bred that was owned by Semex.

The Penners are incredibly passionate about breeding Holstein cattle and aren’t afraid to sell a good one, as that provides a challenge to replace her by breeding an even better one. WestGen congratulates the Penner family on their efforts which have earned them this fantastic achievement they’ll be recognized for in New Brunswick this April.