Conant Acres Inc. is a family owned and operated dairy farm milking 75 registered Holsteins in a tie stall barn 2x daily with a lactation average of 28,391m  3.6%  1017f 3.0%   838.  Our most recent official classification BAA is 112.5% with 52 EX and 45 VG.

Conant Acres Inc, formed in 1970, was the family farm since 1936.  When the corporation was formed it involved mother Gladys and brothers Norris, Duane, and George.  At the start there were very few registered cows.  Duane sold grades and purchased registered cattle periodically, many of these purchases went on to score VG or EX.

In 1979, we started to do embryo transfer work.  One of the first cows flushed was an Elevation daughter that Duane had purchased and scored EX.  She was flushed to Valiant resulting in eleven heifer calves.  Some of these were sold in consignment sales.

 

 

 

 

 

Several expensive cows were purchased with partners to spread risk.  One of these was Swampy-Hollow Elevation Sweet 3E-92.  She is the cow that really put us on the map.  She is the dam of the Broker bull and approximately ½ of the current herd traces back to Sweet.

Our flush program worked very well for us.  We had 2 years in a row that we sold over 800 embryos overseas, followed by several other years of 300-500.  All through the years we stressed type in our herd and the BAA reached a high point of 113.2% which put us #1 in the country for our herd size at that time.

            1982 – Dennis (Duane and Betty’s son) finished college and returned to the home
                        farm
            1983 – purchased Swampy-Hollow Elevation Sweet-ET
            1982 – hosted New England Summer Picnic (featured speaker – Robert Heilman
                        of AMS Genetics)
            1990 – hosted Triple Crown Sale – sale averaged $12,000 (Sweets Averaged $20,000)
            1995 – Duane – winner of New England Holstein Association Master Breeder
                        Award
            1996 – Duane and Betty bought out the corporation
            1999 – Dennis – winner of New England Outstanding Young Breeder Award

In April, 2003 Dirigo Holsteins Inc merged with Conant Acres.  Steve & Debbie (Conant) Keene and Natalie and Brian – winners of the 1997 Holstein Association USA Outstanding Young Breeder award decided to move to Canton and combine the two operations resulting in an excess of cattle.  We sold two groups of cattle in Pennsylvania and have continued to sell a number of fresh cows locally.  Two important cow families brought along in the merger were the 3E-95 Pond Oak Ned Boy Margot-ET and EX-91 Caernarvon Cleitus Jean-ET families along with the 2E-95 Integrity Robin cow.