FH in Zuid Afrika

De heer J. Sadie richtte zijn correspondentie aan de familie Endendijk, waarvan Harmen weer met mij (uw webmaster) contact opnam. Eventuele gevonden gegevens kunnen ook aan hen gestuurd worden. Ik heb de e-mail-wisseling grotendeels intact gelaten, maar soms ingekort, herschikt of voorzien  van cursief of kleur. Uiteraard onthoud ik de surfers niet de recentie (of die van Harmen) over de site.   

Kees Ruyter

"Messrs  Dirk and Harmen Endendijk           (adres)      Saterdag,  24 April 2004.

Dear Dirk and Harmen.

...Dirk, if you would like to write to me in Dutch, you are very welcome.   I am quite capable of  reading  it and I  can also follow a conversation in Dutch very well, just as long as  it is not too fast and not in another dialect.  Our Afrikaans is not too far away from your language.  Julle sal dit baie maklik verstaan.

 Now back to the cows.   Yes, your cattle are very nice, but they do differ from what we are use to these days, especially here in the Western Cape where we have no grazing, just a complete feed (TMR and mixer wagons).   But, as you mentioned they are bred for a reason.   Being a more hardy animal and together with the lovely solids and milk I saw on the pedigree of Rivelino 382,  one can just envy them.   I think a lot  of breeders  here would lick  their lips to own such animals, they will earn much more money from their milk-buyers.... I was astonished with the pedigree of 382.   Never in my life have I seen  such a pedigree with 14 out of 16 bulls being all RIVELINO-sires.   This  really is  a life-time of breeding.     

 The dairy-business here in our area is going through a very bad phase.  The price of milk  keeps on  coming down and feed prices are climbing every month.   Together with this, the price for slaughter cows are the lowest in a long time, so what do you do.   Our black government (ANC) are not interested in our farmers that kept them alive for many years.  With the Rand (our money ) (plus minus 8 Rand to an Euro)  as it stands now, it is much cheaper for them to import cheese,  powder milk  and meat.   As there are no subsidies on any farming product, it is just one great battle to keep on farming.  We from Taurus also find that people are buy cheaper semen or rely much more on bulls.

 I was also impressed with the pedigree-form, very straight forward with all the necessary information,  scores and complete lists of all milk-records.  With our official pedigree (from S.A. Holstein), we only print a 4-generation.   For the dam and two granddames up to 12 lactations can be printed, but only 3 each for the females in the 4^th generation (although all lactations are on the system).  The computer chooses the three highest one’s.   It makes things a bit easier in my search for data.   Luckily, I could find most of the info on  bulls that are the sires of the imported animals.   So once a bull is complete on the system, it is there for life and then I can just refer to his/her registration number.  

The sires of most (missing animals), not all,  were:

Jelsumer Gerard Wouter,  Jelsumer Gerard Wouter 6, Jelsumer Douwe Nelis and some of his sons, Adema 561, Nuboxer bulls – Verwachting, Coningh, Klaus, Franciscus, De Groote   (vreselijk benieuwd naar de afstamming van Nuboxer Verwachting. Daar zitten veel Coba's achter... hij via Anne Oosterbaan is verkocht naar Zuid-Afrika... gefokt is door een Ruyter!),  Haubois,  Dageraad,  Súdhoekster,  Amarilla,  Blitsaerd Keimpe  (many of them),
Blitsaerd Setske’s Keimpe.                                 

These  are  just the more frequent one’s.     I  am  sending  you  two list  of names and registration numbers of females in my pedigrees  that I still miss the complete info of.   If this is not what you need,  please  let  me  know  and  I  will  do  it  in  another  way  –  you just tell me how.   In some cases  through  my  search  I  found  say  maybe  two  records  of an animal  –  the one at 2-02 and again at 13-10.    That  shows  you  there  are many  more and that is my problem, I just can’t find them.   I also try to put in all protein kilograms  as we started very late testing for that.  I  multiply the  milk  with  the  %  butterfat  and  protein and just supply that to SA Holstein.  If I supply both kilo’s  and  the  %,  the computer rounds it off to a wrong number, for instance  4.04% becomes a 4.00% and    3,75  a  3.80%.    If I do it my way, the correct percentages are used.   If  I  can  only get something back,   I’ll be very happy.

....Do you have a good map of South Africa (not Africa as a whole) – please let me know.   I got a very nice map from Holland Genetics and  now  I know exactly where  “your” ERMELO is.   

Reading out of  “ UIT DE NEDERLANDSE KOEKRANT, 2003” (that I got from the website) on page 4,  I also located all the areas you visited with the British breeders.  I enjoyed the piece – Overpeinzingen (Rivella 16) from your Dad.

Well, Harmen, by this time you are probably so bored with all my stories that I should  rather stop just here. I will be looking forward to hearing from you at any time. My very best regards to you and your family and once more my sincere thanks.

All the very best,  "

JAPIE

"P.S.   In Natal-area  (about  1600 km from here) there is a farmer,  Douglas Ralfe, (now 89 years old)  breeding only FH.    He imported heifers from England in the  late 70’s  or  beginning  1980 (I am no too sure) and is concentrating on FH. He spoke to me on the phone for a very long time a few  days  ago  and  begged me to come and visit him before he dies. At the end of last year he imported about 100 straws of the bull LORD 133.  He and his son are milking  close to 200 cows on grazing and they are doing extremely well.   I really think the two of  you are absolutely  talking the same language in your every day existence. "

"Hallo Kees,

 Hier een mailtje uit Ermelo. Allereerst complimenten voor je FH-website. Leuke, vrolijke opmaak en veel informatie. Een man van KI Taurus uit Zuid-Afrika heeft hem ook gelezen en was erg enthousiast. Daar mail ik even over. Hij stuurde ons een brief met een voor hem “verdrietig” verhaal.

Hier de tekst (about lost FH Data). 

 "Dear Mr Endendijk,

 Your name was given to me and therefore I am taking this opportunity to write  to you. 

 You probably know that in the period,  1950 – until early 1980 (when the import of live animals into  S.A. was stopped), very many  young bulls and females were imported into this Country from the F.R.S. and later N.R.S.   This was the time before Canadian and American semen took over here.

 When our SA Friesland (now Holstein) Vereniging went over from the card-system of records to the computer-system, they took in “punch-girls” to do the work.  These women had no idea of animals and none so ever of records.  That meant that not all the data was transferred and in some cases only the name of the animal was entered.  It seems to me that nobody at that stage worried about it as Holstein was all they talked about.  So as you can think all the old data was gone when they destroyed the old cards of all the animals.

 I wrote to the NRS to try and get some pedigrees of bulls like BLITSAERD KEIMPE, his son BLITSAERD SETSKE’S KEIMPE, PAN 50 and PAN 55, NIERTJE’S ADEMA 12, but the reply was that the same story happened to them, records of those old animals are no longer available.   To me this was unacceptable.  

 I then started to go through all the old Friese-Veefokkerije I still had and took out all the bits and pieces  (scores and lists of milk records) that I could find.  Of course this is not nearly enough to complete everything.   Another thing in my path was that many of the breeders who imported these animals are no longer alive and their families that took over destroyed all the old data as it was worthless to them – they were all in the Holstein game.   I was however lucky to find a few Fokboeke (breeders brought them here from Holland) and handwritten pedigrees of  imported animals.   That also help a tremendous lot.

 The lady in our Holstein-office is helping me to put back all the pedigrees when I completed them – so it is up to me to find the data.

 Now my question to you.   Is there perhaps anywhere, except for the N.R.S.,  that I can try to get hold of this info.  I thought If I can get some old sire catalogues from different  A.I. Co-ops (before they all became Holland Genetics) I would be able to find quite a lot of info.   Catalogues such as those from Stompentoren and Sijberkarspel had full pedigrees (especially full list of milk records) of their bulls.  The company, World Wide Semen Trade from Hoorn also had a very complete catalogue and I managed to get some pages which provided a lot of info.  I suppose one might still find some of these old catalogues from people who do not farm anymore but still have them somewhere.  What do you suggest?

 I will not be able to rebuild the pedigrees of all animals that were imported into this Country but I would like to complete those of bulls that were either imported by Taurus itself of owned by them.   In those days Taurus were able to buy older imported bulls who bred well in herds  from breeders/importers and relocate them at Taurus.  I am still struggling with the pedigree of ADEMA 561 as I can not find the last few lactations of his dam, ADEMA 515.  Many of his sons and daughters were imported.  I am also looking at animals from the stables of Jelsumer, Blitsaerd, Amarilla, Súdhoekster, Haubois and the Jeltje cows from H A de Vries.

 To give you an idea of how bad the data on our system is, the following.  The bull NUBOXER VERWACHTING was crowned Champion in Leeuwarden in 1974.  He then came to South Africa.  He was the highest scored bull (89 pts) ever to be imported.  At our National Friesland/Holstein Show (held every 5 years) he became Senior and Grand Champion in 1975.  He also won numerous Championships at other shows in the Country.  Now for this bull, only his name and date of birth appear on his pedigree.  This is really not good enough and therefore I am trying  to correct this.

 It is really sad that the NRS did not keep (stored) the old data in some way or another.

 So this is my very long story (for something I hope to get) but I am sure you will understand.  I hope to hear from you when time permits.

 With my best regards"

 JAPIE  SADIE

 "Daar ben ik weer. Hij heeft ook nog een lijstje met wat specifiekere wensen nagezonden (zie attach). Waar hij kennelijk met name naar op zoek is, zijn de afstammingen van die stieren en de melklijsten van de genoemde koeien.... 

 Vriendelijke groeten, "  

 Harmen Endendijk,  (29 april 2004)

"Adres Dirk en Harmen Endendijk: Slagsteeg 33, 3853 MA Ermelo, endyk@hotmail.com, 0341-552833, (fax idem)".      

" HAUBOIS  WOUTER  7  -  IMP,      66766I  F.R.S.

 SA. NR:            31880  NLD   BORN:  12-12-1966    SCORE:  83 PT

IMPORTED/BY:  MURRAY & WATKINS FARMING ENTERPRISES, NATAL

OWNER:         TAURUS  CO-OP

SIRE:               HAUBOIS  WOUTER,  no.  51945I  NLD    78 PT

DAM:              HAUBOIS  REINO  101,  no.  547-160I  NLD    86 PT

SIRE:               HAUBOIS ANNA’S  ADEMA,   no.  44162I  NLD   83 PT

DAM:              REINO  50,  no.  281148I  NLD    85 PT

SIRE:               HAUBOIS  ADEMA,  no.  40849I  NLD    79 PT

 DAM:           REINO  31,  no.  212973I  NLD    78 PT

(Al drie die vaders behoort volledig op die stelsel te wees.    Sien hulle  egter aangeheg.)"