Carnation Herd is Dispersed

The Carnation Farms Complete Dispersal held January 17, 2004, in the Snoqualmie Valley of Washington, brings to a close an important chapter in Holstein history, a chapter that dove-tails with Alta’s US roots. The herd of two hundred twenty-nine animals averaged $2212, while 22 calves averaged $1338. The top seller of the day at $7400 was a VG-87 fresh Charles daughter from eight generations of Excellent dams tracing to the Diamond Eve Corry family. The crowd favorite, a Leduc second-calf heifer from a VG-89, 1207F dam backed by eight generations of EX from the Corrys sold for $6400.

Carnation Milk Farms was founded in the Seattle, WA area in 1910, becoming a very prominent Holstein herd, merchandizing livestock throughout the world. With the advent of frozen semen in the 1940’s, Carnation began selling semen on their famous sires to fledgling A.I. coops and private A.I. organizations in the U.S.

In 1965, as A.I. became more mainstream Carnation made its bid to enter the U.S. A.I. business by purchasing Eastern Iowa Breeders, Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Piper Brothers Breeding Service, Watertown Wisconsin; and Associated Breeders, Lena, Wisconsin. The merged group set up shop at Watertown, WI, under the name Carnation Breeding Service. Today it’s the Wisconsin location where Alta’s US offices and bull barns can be found. Carnation Breeding Service sold semen to dairymen in Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota through a network of independent A.I. technicians.

After reasonable success marketing and developing bulls like Carnation Royal Master, Pineyhill Majority and Gar Bar Dale Burke Kate, Carnation decided to expand by buying Genetics, Inc., an A.I. stud and marketing network in the eleven western states. At the same time, Carnation bought Pro Genetics, a semen marketing organization in New York and New England. The administrative headquarters of the new division known as Carnation Genetics were moved to the old Genetics, Inc. offices in Hughson, California. Later, in 1973, Pete Blodgett convinced Clarke Nelson, (then Vice President of Carnation Company, in charge of the Milling Division, Research Farm, and the Genetics Division) that to remain viable for years to come, a young sire proving program was needed. A program to take the management bias out of the sampling of bulls – the “GO” genetic opportunity program officially got its start in 1974.

In 1985, Nestle, the world-wide food giant, purchased all of the Carnation Company. It was the largest non-oil company merger up to that time in the business world and made headlines worldwide. Several of Carnation’s non-food divisions were put up for sale to help finance the deal, however, before the genetic division was considered, Clarke Nelson decided to retire from the Carnation Company and purchase the genetic division for himself and his family. Landmark Genetics was “born” September 1st 1985 and flourished under General Manger Pete Blodgett’s tenure. Nearly ten years later, after several good growth years, Landmark joined Alta Genetics on March 1st 1995. While the farm and the Carnation herd remained under the ownership of Nestle, the bond with Alta remained strong.

Through nearly 100 years in existence, Carnation farms developed many cows to notoriety. In its hey-day numerous production records were established by Carnation bred cows and the influence of these pedigrees can still be found on modern Holstein breeding.

Posted Jan 23th

<< Back to Top