TRAINEE POSITIONS AVAILABLE

Harmony-Ho Holsteins has been hosting foreign trainees since 1991. Most of the trainees have participated in an extremely well coordinated program; MAST, which can be contacted at the following web site:
http://mast.coafes.umn.edu/

Harmony-Ho Holsteins is located in Marathon County in the state of Wisconsin, heart of America’s dairy land, with Madison serving as the host city for the World Dairy Expo. The population of the area consists largely of a German, Polish and Scandinavian ancestry with a strong dairy tradition. The climate varies greatly from winter to summer with extremes in each season. The community of Stratford (3 miles north) has a population of 1400 with the city of Marshfield (10 miles south) having a population of 20,000. You will be living in a four bedroom farm house located 3.5 miles from the main farm along with 4-5 other students. Please be prepared to buy a car as soon as you arrive (approximately $1200 will buy a good used car).

Every effort is made to provide a challenging rewarding and fun work experience while at Harmony-Ho Holsteins. We look forward to your arrival and participation in our business.

To receive further information please refer to the "contact us" page of this site.

CURRENT OPERATING STATUS OF HARMONY-HO HOLSTEINS

 

Herd status:  450 total cows, 390 in milking string.  DHIR RHA 30,000M +1000F +900P (13600 kgM, 454kgF, 409kgP).  Goals: Market +90#(43L)/cow/day of 3.6%fat, 3.0% protein (equals 1.3 Million lbs/worker including family labor). Housing: milking herd - 326 stall, 4-row sand bedded, head to head stalls, drive through feeding, headlocks, skid loader scraped with 1 month of manure storage (liquid). Maternity pen, hospital pen and calf housing - in old dairy barn.  108 stall 3-row Dry cow/Prefresh barn. Milking system: Dbl-8 Germania with Afimilk information system.  Two person team comfortably milks 75 cows/hour - harvesting 2000# milk/hour.  Parlor will milk 550 cows 3x. BECO pulsation monitoring system installed May ’04. Heifers: raised to 4 months of age then go to custom grower and then returned 2 months prior to calving.

Land base: 400 (160 HA) tillable acres owned and rented.  This acreage devoted to forage production will provide 50% of the herds forage needs.  Local grower is utilized for additional forage and grain needs. Labor: 9 full time and 5 part time employees.  We are slightly over staffed - but  like it that way! Herd Sire Enterprise:  Harmony-Ho Holsteins and Badger Holsteins of Unity (Larry Meyer and families) have pooled resources to form a herd sire enterprise which will provide a large selection of high quality herd sires.  http://www.harmonyho.com/holsteins.cfm Milking age female sales: Call or email for availability. GENEX cooperator herd:  Harmony-Ho Holsteins houses and cares for the females which are a part of the GENEX Multiple Ovulation Embryo Transfer program. http://genex.crinet.com/page363/GENESISEmbryos

The staff of Harmony-Ho welcomes the opportunity to exchange ideas with our fellow dairymen.  It is only through the sharing and implementation of ideas that we will all have the opportunity to prosper into the future.  We hope that you will find your visit enjoyable and educational.