2016 Young Breeder Award Recipient
Joe Loehr, Loehr Dairy LLC, Mount Calvary, WI
By Amber Dietz
Loehr Dairy LLC is operated by Joe and his two brothers and has been a family business for over 140 years. Joe handles all of the herd management decisions as well as the financial records for the farm. Joe’s younger brother Mark manages crop production and machinery and his older brother Dan is in charge of facilities and special projects. Joe’s father and older sister also help assist with seasonal crop work along with his other seven siblings helping out when needed.
Growing up, Joe and his family milked 40 Holstein cows in a tie-stall stanchion barn. After graduating high school, Joe began working full time on the farm and the family added 12 more tie-stalls to their facility and a calf building onto the farm. Three years later, Joe and Dan formed Loehr Dairy LLC and added another 120 cows in a freestall barn with a doublefour-flat-barn milking parlor. As the years came, Joe and his brothers started expanding their herd even more and have built numerous facilities to help with their growing needs along with expanding their farming acreage. Today, Loehr Dairy LLC milks a total of 425 cows three times a day with 35 of those cows being registered Brown Swiss. Joe has been married for nine years and has five young children who like to help out around the farm.
Loehr Dairy LLC currently has four honored cows on the top 300 PPR cow list. These four cows come from different cow families. Holyland Tops and Holyland Treasure 2352 are both daughters of Cozy-Nook Joel Tipsy ‘EX90.’ Tipsy also has six sons in active AI use. Holyland Kicks 2083 is the daughter of Holyland Driver Kicks. Holyland Driver Kicks also has another very highranking daughter on the genomic heifer list. The fourth member of the top PPR cow list is Holyland Agenda Taffy who is developing well and is the daughter of Jakel Prestige Taffy, whom they developed into a 92-point cow with high lifetime production. Joe also has 11 heifers in the top 100.
Joe has been involved in many different offices and organizations over his lifetime. He is an Ag-Source Delegate and started in 2012, he was a part of the Fond du Lac County Land Use Planning Committee from 2012-2013, he is a Shepherd of the Hills Catholic Parish Council Committee member, and is also a Third Degree Member of the Knights of Columbus.
Loehr Dairy LLC has received the BSA Genetic Honor Herd Award in 2012, 2013, and 2014, as well as the Progressive Genetic Herd award in 2013 and 2014. They earned the Holstein Association Progressive Genetic Herd Award in 2013, 2014, and 2015.
Joe’s goals for their Brown Swiss herd are to continue to improve the production and conformation of their cows and to breed higher-producing, more effective cows that provide the necessary nutrients and resources for the world. He would also like to bring their Brown Swiss herd average to 25,000 pounds of milk or higher while maintaining a minimum of 3.4 percent protein. Lastly, Joe wants to continue to market genetics from their herd to other people around the world.