The Stormview herd has been gradually building up over my dairying career, a few calves here, a cow there, and they have either been with me in my management positions, ar later, when numbers got larger, leased out to other farmers. No matter what the arraingement at the time, I have always supplied the straws and nominated the matings for the cows.
There are really 4 main sources for the genetics in the Stormview herd.
1) The Trilass stud of Bill and Pam McLean, as mentioned on their own page within this site.
2) The herd of S.Nielsen of Whatawhata . I was lucky enough to purchase the entire line of calves from the Nielsen's when they had their dispersal sale in 2002. These calves were by L.I.C bulls like Hugo and Josiah, but they were bred from big powerful cows with quite a large amount of overseas genetics in them, and so have a bit more size and capacity to them than you might expect from just straight New Zealand cows.
To Stuart and his family we would like to say "Thank You" , these cows are now rising 8 year olds, and are a pleasure to milk, some have daughters in the herd, and there are more coming in next year, they have formed a great base from which to build our herd.
3) The herd of Richard and Robyn Scott, formerly of Matamata, now residing in Walton. We purchased 70 crossbred cows from the Scotts to come to our current 50/50 position, and we have not been disappointed. Not as big as some of our friesian girls, I wondered at times how they would handle the competition. All fears vanished when we calved them down, they handled it just fine, and although they have had to endure some tough seasons, they are performing well, and we look forward to milking their daughters in the future.
4) The herd of Max and Marie Doelman, who were our neighbours at Tahuna for the 3 years we were there. We purchased heifer calves from Max and Marie two of our three years as neighbours, the last year of these are now rising 3 year old., Sired by LIC sire proving bulls, they are making their own mark on the herd, not surprising when you think that Max and Marie won the Sire Proving Farmer of the Year title while we were buying their calves! !
We have been registering the cows that are eligible over the last 3 years, and have decided that from now on, only the cows that have daughters which are registerable will be put up for registration. So if an unregistered cow has a friesian daughter, and the cow herself is eligible for the supplimentary register, we will register them both.
So, as it stands, Stormview Holstein Friesians currently consists of 149 cows that are either Pedigree or registered with the NZHFA on the supplimentary register, and 50 crossbred and friesian cows that are either not eligible for registration, or waiting to have a daughter and graduate to the list that need to be registered!
Nearly all of the youngstock are registered, and our goal is to have 100% registerable calves each year from now on.
Over the years it has taken to build up the herd, I have bought from nearly all of the AB companies, and as a result we have a wide variety of bulls within the herd. Below is a list of some of the bulls we have represented within the herd, not all of them obviously, as that would take pages, but the ones who made an impact, good or bad, and have multiple daughters here. Bulls are listed with the companies they were bought from, not necessarily the company that markets them now.
LIC
Hugo, Josiah, Dauntless, Elsto, Kilmory.
Ambreed
Pierre, Favour, Janze Moun, Xavier, Magley, Paladium, Slade, Corky, Gold Bullion, Diego, Dynamic.
Genetic Enterprises
Arpagone, Landis, Boss Iron, Dynamite, Liam, Jocko Franco.
Samen
Picasso
World Wide Sires
Ricecrest Marshall, Metro, Kermit, Curtis, Palmer.
