A fairly new acquaintance was at my home for a meeting and saw a couple of stitchery pieces I made, had framed and then gave to my parents years ago.
I got them back after my mother passed away as we were cleaning out her belongings. They were just propped up against the end of the couch as I was trying to figure out where to hang them in my home.
This woman went absolutely crazy over one of them and wanted to know if she could buy it. She said it was beautiful and she wanted it.
As I said, I don’t know her well. I was thinking, “is she crazy?” It is a big picture of a cow. Granted, it’s a very special cow (to my family especially, and to others as well), but this woman has never been around cattle, so why would she want a picture of Spring Summit Leprechaun Sue?
She wanted me to sign it and date it.
I told her I would not sell it. I had no idea of how to put a price on it anyway. I think it cost me $100 to have it framed about 50 years ago. I don’t remember how many hours it took me to make it, so how would I figure an hourly wage or some other means of placing a value on it?
She insisted she really wanted the picture of “a cow named Sue.”
I was sure none of my sons would want it when I am gone, so I told her I would give it to her. If it meant that much to her, if she would enjoy having it in her home, then it is a good place for “Sue” to go.
So, I signed the back and went to my scrapbook to find the date. “Sue,” along with my father and mother, a big bouquet of flowers and a couple from Wisconsin who we bought Sue’s dam (mother) from when she was pregnant with Sue, graced the front cover of the Western Farmer magazine in 1977.
Sue and my younger brother were featured on the cover of a June issue of the Holstein Friesian World, as well.
So, having fetched the magazines to remember what year it was so I could sign it, we then got into a lesson on cow milk production.
The gal wanted to understand what all the numbers stood for. So, a basic milk cow 101 course ensued, complete with a calculator.
First, an explanation of her name.
Within the registered Holstein breed, each farm has a prefix — their herd name. I registered my prefix when I was 10 years old. Time went by, and I expanded the prefix to be used by my entire family. Thus, every animal bred by my family carries the prefix of Leprechaun. It becomes the first name in their name. Their middle name is their sire’s (father’s) name, and the third part of their name derives from their dam.
We used the first letter of a cow’s name to name each of her offspring. So, a cow’s name tells us what ranch she is from, who her sire is and what cow family she is a part of.
So — Spring Summit Leprechaun Sue. Because we bought Sue’s dam when she was pregnant carrying Sue, she had to carry the farm name of her breeder, which was Spring Summit.
Because she was actually born on our ranch, we used Leprechaun rather than her sire’s name as her middle name. Her mother’s name started with an S, so she became Sue.
Just a side note, “Sue” had two sons, "Superior” and “Sioux.” The letters VG at the end of Sue’s name stand for “very good.” That is another whole lesson in itself, but it is a scoring system done to evaluate a cow’s conformation.
This is when the calculator came out. All those numbers! Three and six means that Sue was three years and six months old when she calved and started her lactation (time she was milking before going dry — going on vacation to rest and prepare for her next calving and lactation). 305d (and below it 365d) indicates the number of days that she milked to produce her record. “2X” means that she was milked twice per day. Some dairies milk three times a day (we did for a short time in other years) so as to increase the cow’s total production. That is another lesson. Looking at her 305-day lactation: 34,973M is the pounds of milk she produced in that 305-day period. Her milk was 4.5% fat (cream) so 1558F is the pounds of fat she produced, and 2948 is the pounds of solids-not-fat (protein, carbohydrates, minerals and vitamins) that she produced.
Calculator time.
A gallon of milk weighs 8.6 pounds (that’s whole milk, as skim milk weighs about 8.3 pounds, more like a gallon of water as it has had the fat, protein some nutrients removed). Sue produced 34,973 pounds of milk. Divide that by 8.6 pounds per gallon and you find out that she produced 4,067 gallons of milk in 305 days. 4,067 divided by 305 tells us she averaged 13.33 gallons per day. That is her average for that 305 days.
When a cow starts her lactation, she gradually increases in production, peaks and plateaus, then gradually decreases until she dries up.
So, I no longer have access to the records, but at her peak, Sue was producing well over 15 gallons per day. That one cow fed a lot of families.
So, a “cow named Sue” became world famous. She broke national records for milk, fat and solids-not-fat.
We had a heck of a celebration on St. Patrick’s Day to honor her and some of her herd mates who were also setting records. People debate whether it is genetics, nutrition or management that determine what a cow produces.
My father, a dairy veterinarian by training, spoke of Sue’s higher than normal metabolism and the fact that her body temperature ran .8 degrees above normal.
He felt all three things (genetics, nutrition and management) were important, but would also added “but perhaps the ‘luck of the Irish’ is most important of all.”
Whatever the answer is, basically, 50 years later, I know my family was blessed to have the privilege of working with “a cow named Sue.”
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Maureen Harkcom is a past president and current membership chair of the Lewis County Farm Bureau. She can be reached by email at maureen.harkcom@gmail.com.
