It got down to 13 degrees last night, so this morning I went out to the well house to check the temperature at the well head. It was all fine, but I noticed something hanging on a nail in a dark corner as I was leaving.
It’s a Minnesota Breeders Co-Operator newsletter from November 1948.
This particular edition seems to be focused on promoting and selling dairy bull semen. On the front are a few articles about the “cutting edge” practice of artificial insemination.
“Pioneers in artificial insemination gave this new phase of breeding its first breath back in the years 1940-1941-1942 when the ground work was laid for the Minnesota Valley Breeders Association at New Prague and Southern Minnesota Breeding Federation at Owatonna.”
The other eleven pages of the newsletter are filled with bull profiles.
I found the one at the top right to be particularly interesting.
H-32 PIETERTJE ROSE OF GRAHAMHOLM 802587
Born December 5, 1939
Proven in St. Mary’s Hospital Farm herd at Rochester, Minn. Richly Carnation bred.
lbs. Milk % Test Lbs. Fat
21 daughters average 13,630 3.4 461
19 daughters average 13,461 3.4 455
19 dams average 12,436 3.3 415
Difference +995 +.1 +40
Sire: Rosehill Perfection Progress 728186. A Proven Sire.
Dam: Pietertje Homestead Grahamholm 1673656
St. Mary’s Hospital, the largest of the hospitals that make up the Mayo Clinic, used to have it’s own farm with it’s own dairy herd? I’d never have guessed it by looking at it today.
A little more digging turned up St. Mary’s Hospital in an old Holstein herd book.
And compare those milk production numbers to the current averages, over 21,000 lbs.
Very interesting Andrew, who would have thought!
I asked Callina about the Hospital Farm when she got home. “Oh yeah, didn’t I tell you that? In orientation they told us there used to be a farm, that’s where they got the food to feed all the patients!”