Mount Victoria Farm
Author: Ronald F. Eustice
Dr. Thomas Bassett (T.B.) Macaulay (1860-1942), was known in the corporate world as the man who made the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada into one of the world’s pre-eminent insurance firms. For dairy farmers, his legacy is that of breeding some of the best Holsteins in the World.
$35.00
Dr. Thomas Bassett (T.B.) Macaulay (1860-1942), was known in the corporate world as the man who made the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada into one of the world’s pre-eminent insurance firms. For dairy farmers, his legacy is that of breeding some of the best Holsteins in the World. For agriculturalists, T.B. Mccaulay was the creator of the Macaulay Institute for Soil Research at Aberdeen, Scotland.T.B. Macaulay got into Holstein cattle more by chance than by design. When he discovered the farm he had purchased at Hudson Heights, Quebec was more of a sand pile than crop land, he starting purchasing livestock. Macaulay had very definite ideas on the subject of genetics. Over time six of the Mount Victoria females became known as “The Big Six”. They where Oakhurst Colantha Abbekerk (the maternal great-granddam of Montvic Rag Apple Sovereign), Ingleside Pietje Posch, progenitors of the Abbekerk and Pietje families, Dixie Colantha Hartog, foundation dam of the Hartog family and Lady Meg Posch and Bonheur Abbekerk Posch 2nd, cornerstones of the Posch and Bonheur bloodlines. Combined with the purchase of Johanna Rag Apple Pabst, Macaulay went on to change the Holstein breed. Today nearly every Holstein cow in the world has Montvic blood running through its veins! In 1958, when T.B. Macaulay’s memory was honored by the hanging of his portrait in the Pioneer Room of the Dairy Shrine Club, it was announced that over ninety percent of Canadian Holsteins at that time were descendants of Mount Victoria breeding. The first registered Holstein arrived at Mount Victoria Farm in 1924. The Mount Victoria herd was dispersed in 1942, following Macaulay’s death. Over eighteen years, Macaulay created a bloodline that made Montvic the premier Holstein herd of its day. Copies of the herd dispersal catalog are highly collectible and extremely rare. Original copies have sold for as much as $2000 at public auction. For sale is a high quality digital copy of the Mount Victoria Dispersal Catalog. Catalog includes 84 pages.