Visitors to the MOOseum are often surprised to see the bull Paclamar Astronaut in the King Barn as part of the MOO’s Herd. After all, the King Barn was where the cows were milked, and Astronaut was certainly not giving any milk!
In the Holstein cow world, Astronaut is a very famous bull, even now in the 21st Century. He made the front page of the Wall Street Journal, as well as both the Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI) wire services during the summer of 1976, and is the only Holstein to appear on the cover of the Holstein World magazine three times.
So why is Astronaut so famous? What is his connection to Montgomery County, Maryland?
Astronaut was born in early 1964 to Harborcrest Rose Milly, a widely known All-American cow with a sensational dairy record. Farmers were interested – after all, more milk, more money. The study of genetics to improve production had already started in the dairy world, and if Milly gave a lot of milk, perhaps her offspring would inherit those genes and give a lot of milk.
It just so happened that in 1964 the national Holstein association convention was meeting in June in Washington, DC with national cow sales being held at the nearby Montgomery County Fairgrounds in Gaithersburg, Maryland. After conferring with fellow dairymen, Billy King – whose dairy farm Irvington Farm is now the home of King Farm housing development in Rockville across from Shady Grove Metro Station – arranged for this 5-month-old bull calf to be sent by Paclamar Farms where he had been bred and born.
Billy King, whose father Lawson owned Irvington Farms and was the younger brother of James King whose farm is now South Germantown Recreation Park, talked to other local dairy farmers to form a syndicate to purchase Astronaut at the cow sales. The amount of money needed from each farmer was a lot – about one month’s milk check – so it took a while to finally get the group together.
As the story goes, one farmer dropped out when he saw the gangling bull calf get off the train from out west, but the others remained. Although the syndicate members had agreed to go as high as $1,500 a piece, they ultimately each paid about $9,000 to purchase the bull calf. Astronaut ultimately made each of them into millionaires!
Astronaut stayed at Billy King’s Irvington Farm about 6 months until an agreement was made with Curtiss Breeding Service, whose headquarters were in Illinois. Curtis agreed to collect and distribute the bull’s semen. Curtiss would determine the price of each ampule of semen to be sold, as well as the percentage of the profits to be sent to each syndicate member.
In only a few years word got around that Astronaut’s daughters “made milk like they invented it.” Farmers from across the USA and ultimately the world requesting semen from Astronaut. By 1969, Astronaut became the youngest bull ever at 5 years old to earn a Gold Medal through artificial insemination and within a few years he made the Wall Street Journal and AP and UPI wire services. His daughters, granddaughters and succeeding generations continue to make immense contributions to the world’s dairy industry.
As recent as the last ten years, MOOseum Board member Frank Cornelius was traveling in the Netherlands and had the opportunity to visit a diary farm. Frank noticed the famer had Holstein cows. He asked the farmer “Have you ever heard of Astronaut?” The farmer replied “Paclamar Astronaut? Yes – that cow over there is his, and over there….”
The real Astronaut died in December 1978 however the replica of this gorgeous bull is found in the King Barn Dairy MOOseum along with Holstein Jesse and their calf Sheila. These replicas help docents tell the story of how milk is made – from a dad and Mom to the baby and milk, and the story of the famous bull owned by some Montgomery County dairy farmers.