Jerry Emerich began his Select Sires career as an intern in the fall of 1981 and was hired full-time upon the completion of his internship to work in sales in north-central Minnesota. In the spring of 1984, Emerich returned to Ohio where he worked in
international marketing and began his tenure as an SMS consultant. Trained under the tutelage of the founding father of SMS, Ron Long, it wasn’t long before Emerich started evaluating cattle abroad. From the mid-1980s until 2000, Emerich’s
territory included Latin America, Canada and part of the northeastern United States. He now primarily evaluates animals within the Northeast.
Emerich’s role as an SMS evaluator has changed and grown greatly over his 43-year career. “When I started as an SMS consultant, it was all pencil and paper,” recalls Emerich. “We would go out to the farm, evaluate cows and then
go to the hotel at night and utilize a sire grouping chart to individually mate each cow.” Now with the technological efficiencies, Emerich notes not only are genetic consultants able to evaluate more cows, but they are able to do so with more
accuracy. “If some of us mated 5,000 cows a year, it was about all we could handle. Now, at my peak, I did about 120,000 cows in a year.”
Genomics has helped incorporate beef genetics into many of his herds as well. “We can pull information from management programs allowing us to group animals based on different genetic qualifications, which empowers producers to make informed genetic decisions while capitalizing on an opportunity for added value from beef on dairy animals.”
Having a hand in the evolution and improvement of the herds with which he works is important to Emerich. “My customers are milking better cows with more genetic value, all with less health issues. I’m a big believer of incorporating health and management traits and years ago we didn’t have the tools to work those into our matings - now we do.”
A specific example Emerich shares is working with Ideal Dairy Farm and Cookiecutter Holsteins in New York. When he began working with the farm in 1997 they were milking 250 cows and participating in the Program for Genetic Advancement™ (PGA™). In the past 27 years, the herd has grown to 3,500-head, is utilizing more elite genetics, and has gone from sampling young sires to breeding the next generation of young sires at Select Sires. “That’s what I call coming full circle. It’s certainly one of the more rewarding stories of my career,” says Emerich.
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