THE U.S. counts 9 million dairy cows. 90 percent of them are black and white or, less frequently, brown and white. They are called Holsteins. And they all, without exception, originate from the Netherlands.
Americans drink an average of a quart of milk a day, in coffee, from a glass, in pudding, with cereal, in cheese, through butter. They have no idea they owe that to the nearly 9,000 Holstein-Friesian cows brought overseas by Dutch immigrants.
Oklahoma State University and the Holstein Association USA keep punctual records of if and when another calf of originally Dutch origin is born somewhere. This is done by artificial insemination only. A Holstein bull alone produces an average of 50,000 offspring.
WHY SO precise and so meticulous? The breed is protected. Dutch dairy cows are the best in the world, always have been, primarily thanks to the originally unique composition of nutrients in the Dutch meadows where they have been bred for two thousand years.
No new Holsteins have long since been allowed to emigrate to America, for more than a century, because of a cow disease at the end of the 19th century. There’s no need for it either because, thanks to a sophisticated and closely monitored system of breeding, America has plenty of Holstein dairy cows. They are all thoroughbred, the full pedigree of each calf is known.
The average Holstein lady gives 35 liters of milk a day, almost 10 gallons. Some farmers prefer to call it latte. That’s a tribute to the all-time champion that sired no less than 200,000 cows. That bull’s name was Starbuck, after the boatswain on Captain Ahab’s ship in Moby Dick. Written and conceived by Herman Melville, the son of Marie Gansevoort of Groningen. After all, coffee latte chain Starbucks, godfathered by Alfred Peet from Alkmaar, borrowed that very same name.
