Those Jerseys! They are everywhere!

Always nice to see the Jersey breed being recognized as a thriving part of our Canuck dairy industry! When I was at the Manitoba Dairy Conference in early December, I made a pleasing discovery! Jersey Canada Past President Janna Remond came for a visit at one point carrying an interesting T-shirt.

See accompanying photos of the front and back of this "Running Jersey"! The shirts were created by Manitoba Milk, the provincial milk marketing agency. I spoke with the friendly lady who was looking after sales in their promo item booth during the conference. She told me that some on their team felt it was time to go with some colour after creating so many black and white items!  I couldn't help but agree, of course!

Now we might like a prettier cow but we have to recognize that the shirts are for more than the fine connoisseur of cows crew! The 204 "runner number" relates to the area code for Manitoba. We love the message on the backside of the shirt, or Jersey, which reads: "Caution! Drinking Chocolate Milk Can Lead to Winning Races."

We congratulate and thank Manitoba Milk for creating an item featuring a Jersey cow on a running jersey!  The Manitoba Milk website is at www.milk.mb.ca.  Yup, those Jerseys they are popping up anywhere and everywhere, and that will continue and amplify!

What in the name of time is happening here?

WOW! And we mean WOW!

During the time period from November 29 to December 7, our fearless and agile and highly capable National Extension Agent Jean-Marc Pellerin traveled to British Columbia and Manitoba and back home to Quebec. He was doing extension work as part of Jersey Canada's cooperation with regional Jersey associations. In this case Jersey West and Jersey Canada were teaming up to grow the breed in two of the four Western provinces!

In addition J-M attended the annual meeting of the Manitoba Jersey Cattle Club (see our two most recent Think Jerseys! blog postings from earlier this month!) and work with the Jersey display at the associated Manitoba Jersey Conference.

In four and half days (some of them very loooonnnggg days!) J-M accomplished the following in working with newer Jersey owners:

• 20 herd visits
• 6 new members signed up-taking us over 1,025 for the year! 
• 4 new herd names registered-taking us over 130 for the year! 
• 46 registrations! 
• 63 transfers (plus 25 to 30 more that RGG and J-M collected at the Dairy Conference!)
  

The best part of all this is that there are 125 to 150 more transactions to be completed as a result of this trip that could not be completed during the trip. Some of them involved Jersey cattle very freshly-imported from the USA in recent weeks! Our National contacts in BC and Manitoba will follow up on these opportunities and ensure that they are actualized!

This is a phenomenal amount of activity for such a short and jam-packed trip! Two things are readily apparent from the trip! We have a superb National Extension Agent-but you knew that already!  This "Jersey thang" is taking off like never before! We're living in the land of no limits! And we are lovin' that!  Watch us grow and be a part of the momentum!

The Race to Stay Current

Seems like every time we go to print, publish or present some Jersey material we run the extreme risk of being out of date within minutes! Case in point - last week we had the privilege of making a presentation entitled "Celebrating The Jersey Miracle" at an historic annual meeting of the Manitoba Jersey Cattle Club at the Manitoba Dairy Conference. As is so often the case, we were busy putting finishing touches (okay, honesty hour - creating it for the first time!!) on the presentation on Tuesday afternoon December 1 before a Wednesday afternoon flight to Winnipeg (aka Winterpeg)! We thought we were really up to date!

Amongst all the state of the union/status updates, we were beyond chuffed about our 2009 membership total which had climbed to 1,020 as of Monday the 30th of November! And so up to date, we thought!

Got to Manitoba on Wednesday meeting and met up with our Jersey "Man In Motion" Jean-Marc Pellerin, who was fresh from two and a half days work in British Columbia. Jean-Marc had been waving the Jersey flag on behalf of Jersey West/Jersey Canada with much help from BC National Director Anita Norrish. Well, what did J-M have for news? Five new members! New total for 2009? 1,025 - highest in 42 years, but you knew that, eh?

So, on Thursday morning I had to report to the Manitoba meeting that our Power point slides created about 40 hours earlier were already slipping into "outdatedness"! Frankly, I LOVED doing so! Any idea how much fun it is to be involved in a breed where upward trending and "change are the only constants"??? Answer: LOTS!!!

Brilliant concepts/Well Delivered/Tangible Results

Things were really on the go last week in Jersey Canadaland!

For the first time in history, the venerable (but pulsing with life!) Manitoba Jersey Cattle Club held an AGM in conjunction with Manitoba Holsteins and Manitoba Milk, the provincial milk marketing agency. What a roaring success this event was! The Manitoba Dairy Conference is one big deal! At the Thursday evening banquet the crowd was a "sold right out" one at 500 people plus! Attendance at the Jersey meeting held on Thursday morning was triple what it had been in 2008!!!
 

It is so much fun to meet and interact with the scads of new folks we have working with Jerseys these days! It was exciting to see so many young people present! Great for the future! The word Jersey was very high profile on signage and in programs and other materials. Seems like the dairy industry is in robust shape in Manitoba and the same could be said of the Jersey breed. In fact the breed is enjoying the same renaissance in this most easterly of prairie provinces that it is revelling in elsewhere in Canada! Bravo Jersey Manitoba! Super concept, brilliantly actualized!

Meanwhile.....farther east......more Jersey great times were being celebrated in Western Quebec! Jersey Quebec was delivering a two-farm open barn event in that province's fertile Chateauguay Valley! The MacDougall family of Ferme Reyla just north of Ormstown and The Borlands of Rapid Bay Jerseys on the other side of town played host to a very large crowd of Jersey owners and potential Jersey owners. The Borlands estimate that over 200 people were through their barn. Frank Putnam, a writer from Holstein World part of the Dairy Business company in New York state was present and created a great story on the event for Holstein World's All Breeds Blog! The Queen of Rapid Bay, Vandenberg Amedeo Gorgeous EX-97, the two time RAWF Grand Champion, will be featured for the second time on CBC's French language agricultural show La Semaine Verte! There can be no doubt that dairy producers went home both pumped up about the Jersey breed and thinking about how they could integrate Jerseys or more Jerseys into their operations!

Congratulations to all concerned for efforts in getting the word Jersey out there in public! As Gary Bowers, Jersey Canada Past President from 2000 has said: "Our job is to make the word Jersey as highly visible as possible!" Mission in process!

Jersey consignments at the Royal Sale of Stars...

There will be some exciting Jersey choices in the 2009 edition of the Royal Sale of Stars, being held on Thursday, November 12th at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto.

These consignments include:

• a 1st choice of two female pregnancies by "On Time" from Arethusa Comerica Dolce Vita, the daughter of "Veronica" that topped the Avonlea Summer Splash in July.  Consigned by Avonlea & International Genetics
  
  
• a 1st choice female by Rapid Bay Reagan from Lookout Sweet Baby J VG-89-2yr, the 1st place Junior Two Year Old at Madison this fall, and daughter of the EX-94 Drentex Blackstar Baby J.  Consigned by Suitor, Vance and McKinven
  
  
• a 1st choice female by "Legion" or "Action" from Rapid Bay Jace Carla EX-91, grand-daughter of the legendary Duncan Belle.  Consigned by Rapid Bay and Andrew Timbury.

More information on these consignments can be found at www.saleofstars.com.

We shake our heads in wonder and reflect....

In the very early days of November we gained access to our end-of-October numbers for registry activity. We also assembled a few other stats on activity in the Jersey breed in Canada. Love what we found!

About a quarter century ago, in the early 1980s a gent named Gary Baines was Secretary-Manager of Jersey Canada, then the Canadian Jersey Cattle Club. Gary stated a few times that the association should have goals of 10,000 registrations and 1,000 members per year.

We are still working toward the 10,000 registrations total. On the other hand, as of November 3, 2009 we had racked up a glistening total of 1,009 members for this year!

Can you comprehend that our membership has grown 82% during this current decade?? Can you absorb the fact that our 2009 membership total is the highest we've seen since 1967????

A nice addendum to this good news from the end of October figures is the fact that since January 2004 we have processed registration of exactly 800 new herd names! 800!!!

Did you read our blog posting of October 30th entitled What a Pick-Me-Up?? In that one we noted that numbers of milk-recorded herds in Canada containing Jerseys had grown by 93% over the past eight years and that the number of Jerseys on milk recording in Canada had grown by 16% since 2001!!!

And the great, great news kept coming as we made our way through the various reports!

A few more gems were unearthed:

-Record percentage of electronic registrations for a month of over 73% In October and a year to date percentage of over 58!

-Record transfers of embryos for any year in history and 137% ahead of the total for all of 2008!

-Record number of young Jersey sires entering sampling programs in Canada this year! This is the fifth consecutive year a new record number has been set!

-Fourth consecutive year that we have registered more than 110 new herd names!

-On target to have the highest number of registrations since 1999 and the second best total since 1985! There is a moderate chance we could rack up the best total since 1985, virtually a quarter of a century ago!


We have much to rejoice about and to be thankful for, we have much to celebrate, we have much to think about, AND we have much more work to do!

Enjoy the moment golden as it is!

Sea Change Coming?

One of the most energizing parts of Jersey Canada Board meetings-and so much of those meetings brings energy these days-is the segment where Board members report on action in the regions they represent.
During the October Board meetings last month Eastern Ontario Board member Robert (Bob) Jarrell made a very interesting comment. He made reference to three young couples who had been active dairy producers but who had sold their quota and in two cases herds in recent years. Bob noted that all three had very recently re-entered the industry and were once again milking Jerseys!

These comments really piqued our interest. In recent months we have been hearing of revived or brand new "new-entrant" programs in various provinces. Jersey breeders are often in contact with the potential new dairy farmers who are interested in these programs. One interacts with these folks at trade fairs, shows, sales, and other agricultural events. It is amazing to learn of how many of these parties are thinking they should start with Jerseys! Often they note an understanding of the milk price per hectolitre they could garner with Jersey milk.

So......do we have a nice little, growing sea change happening here? Is the dairy industry browning?
Can the potential and Jersey hope of the ages be undergoing a transformation to reality?
Just say YES! :-)