08/30/2026
Second place. Madison, 1989.
That's Marc Comtois holding the lead, and the cow beside him is Comestar Laurie Sheik — the heifer he bred by taking his best cow to a seventeen-year-old bull nobody was using anymore.
Puget-Sound Sheik. Born 1972. VG-85. The AI cooperatives were pushing other bulls entirely.
Look at her udder in this photo. She'd come back after milk-out and moved up to second with Best Udder of the class, ahead of a Starbuck daughter. Before the show she sold for $45,000 — half interest going to Belgium, where import rules meant her genetics had to cross the Atlantic as embryos, on faxes and hand-signed health certificates.
What followed: four millionaire AI sires. Fifty-one countries. Holstein Canada's first-ever Cow of the Year in 1995. Her family won that same award again in 2022.
Fashion is not a breeding plan.
The full story of the 1989 class that rewrote the breed → https://bit.ly/4y3WE2j
Comestar Holstein, Semex