Bestyet Boston – returning A2/A2 sire

Early in our Dutch Belted breeding career, as recounted here, we bought breeding stock from Dorothy O’Neill Hornback’s excellent and longstanding herd. Later we were able to reciprocate by providing her our first homebred bull, Bestyet James (read about him here) to use on her cows.

Bestyet Boston was a result of this collaboration. His dam, O’Neill’s Pearl Arbor, was one of our favorite cows in Dorothy’s herd, a truly great brood cow. Her 5-year-old official record was 14,800m 3.4% 497f, with a very modest feeding program, and her reproductive efficiency was 95%. Particularly significant is her ranking of +2,318 lb milk over herdmates.

Boston was full brother to Dutchess Zelma “O”, a stupendous dairy cow with two records over 20,000m. Her powerful and productive physique was seen in her long, strong head with wide muzzle, deep body, extremely correct feet and legs, and a beautiful udder with height and width and excellent quality.

We often talk about linebreeding, where we “double up” certain exceptional individuals in a pedigree to give us more uniformly superior offspring. By coming back to Boston all these years later, we offer you useful linebreeding opportunities because of the influence of Zelma and Pearl Arbor in the pedigrees of several of our other sires. In the meantime, we’ve also woven in other outcross sires to prevent harmful inbreeding.

In the 1980’s we were occupied with so many other things (such as starting our family) that we didn’t get a picture of Boston himself. He was a typy bull with a somewhat wide belt and white on his back feet and switch. Consequently, we have found that Boston does an especially good job on females with narrow or incomplete belts. His being A2/A2 is another attractive feature.

If you have further questions about Boston, or any other sire, give us a call or email. We’ve been honored to work with this excellent cow family over the years and are pleased bring back for a limited time one of the first A.I. sires from that line.