The Ontario part of the tour gave the chance to get back among Guernsey cows and it is a joy to be looking at cows in the company of some real Guernsey heroes from around the world. The judging competition started in British Columbia resumed but with the addition of a Canadian team Peter White and Canadian Guernsey Field Officer Rob Forster. Also the American Dream team of Seth Johnson and Brian Schnebly the two outstanding young men who are employed by AGA. After each visit I would total up the points from each of the 10 competitors and also of the teams and it became a keenly contested competition with the “wild colonial boys” from Australia taking an early lead and never being headed although the “dream team” did eventually win the final round.
The first herd visited was to the Broadview Farm of the Beynon family and this farm is right on the edge of Toronto. The herd is now managed by Rob Beynon the 7th generation to farm the farm and is still milked and housed in the original tie stall. Rob had kept a dozen or so of his best cows in the shed and by consensus a daughter of Marodore Enhancer Roy (full brother to Regis) was placed first, but I like a Pine Ridge Double L daughter that had a super udder. There were three Coulee Crest Luxury Skipper calves in the pens that just were full of quality and a fresh calved Land of Living RO Levi heifer that also impressed.
The Canadian Dairy Board are still maintaining their strict quota regime and in my view this is a great handicap to their producers with extra quota costing £35000 per cow. I last visited Ontario in 1999 and some of the same farms but nothing has changed in the barns since then.
The second visit was to Warringdale Farms and once again this was a tie stall for about 40 cows, and the winning cow here was a Maplehurst Tiller Lane daughter, medium sized and with a good udder, alongside her was another Levi (maternal grandsire Magicman) who was too big for the shed but had a tremendous udder. Another Levi daughter of the Tiller Lane cow also caught the eye. The cows were still being milked when we arrived and we were able to see the pedigrees of the better cows.
The Warrinner family then produced a magnificent supper, with the best steak that I have eaten over here.
On Monday we visited Comfort Farms where the cows were out at grass, but on a hot day were being persecuted by flies including Warble flies which I haven’t seen for thirty years. There were some good cows here including a Brookleigh GH Quebed, an Australian sire, and his breeders Lyndon and Joyce Cleggett are on the trip. A good young Skipper also took the eye but it was difficult to photograph the cows because of the flies.
From the farm we travelled to Upper Canada Cheese Company, which started five years ago and now uses all of the milk from Comfort Farms and makes three different cheeses from the milk. The business is thriving, but has had to jump through several bureaucratic hoops in order to be able to use the milk of a “nominated” farm by the Canadian Dairy Board, who will not allow the supplying farm to receive any premium as “milk is milk”. This policy is the biggest single obstacle to progress for the Guernsey in Canada.
Maplehurst Farm of the Forster family was the venue for the last visit of the day and was always going to be one of the highlights of the trip as Maplehurst has been the “foremost” of the Canadian herds in the last 10 years.
On arrival we were treated to a parade of some of the notable cows often with their latest calf at foot and calves in particular were outstanding for their growth and development as one would expect from a herd that regularly consigns heifer to the major sales in the USA.
We were then given a very detailed demonstration of the “Canadian” classification system (also used in Australia) which whilst using the same traits as in the UK, puts more emphasis on actual measurements of key traits such as pin width, and listening to Lyndon Cleggett (done a lot of that) he says that it is an improvement on the previous scheme.
I was standing alongside Keith Woodford from New Zealand who was to give a key paper on A2 Milk at the Conference and he was interested in knowing why cow A was better than cow B and so I only got to take the one picture at the farm, of M Challenge Lace who was used for the demonstration. We have seen several Challenge daughters on the trip and have used three sons (Mint, Dynamite and Marksman) in the UK. Lace is the best seen so far.
The next morning we left the hotel early and had breakfast on the farm of John and Nancy Gordon, John is the WGCF President and has organised the Conference with Marie McNab. The herd is now run by Scott Gordon whom I had not met before and I was impressed with his enthusiasm and the Guernseys in the herd, which is mainly Holstein but also contains some Ayrshires, all the Guernseys with one exception trace from the original purchase. Eight of the ten judges selected Don Haven Deemand Vespa as their choice and she is one of the cows that has really stood out on this trip so far.
The second visit was to Eby Manor Farms of Jim and Ruth Eby and family. I got to know them when he judged the Dairy Event in 2000 and I drove them from the airport to Stoneleigh and after the show visited a few farms in the UK.
The tie stall here has been expanded and remodelled to allow the cows to be fed a TMR from a small mixer (holds about a ton of feed) and the young cattle are all under the same roof. Some good cows here from the “W” and the “I” families with two 92 point cows in the shed, one of which named Wayward traces back to the original Wayword (grandam of EM Wesley), but carries the Big Spring prefix. The “dream team” both voted for her but the Aussies voted for EM Bolero Larissa and she was some second place votes emerged as the winner.
My eye was caught by the Aaron calf in the calf house (the picture does not do her justice) out of the EM Banger Inca.
A superb lunch was provide and I overheard one of the ladies suggesting that she should have brought another suitcase with a set of larger clothes for the second half of the tour! If you enjoy food then Guernsey tours are the place to be.
The final visit in Ontario was to Ken and Marie McNabs on the evening of the first day of the conference where in addition to another superb mea, there was both a silent auction and an auction of embrios from Eby Manor and Maplehurst. The auction raised $4500 for the Canadian Associaiton to set against the costs of staging the tour.
The McNabs moved to the farm five years ago and it was the most modern set up we saw, with a herringbone parlour and free stalls (cubicles). The Guernseys were running with Holsteins and there were good cows of both breeds to admire.
It was a really good evening and I got to meet the other Cheese Maker in Ontario using some of the milk from the Eby’s.