A2B—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, December 6,1980 office’ i(l0B
Holstein Association to open
BYCURTHARLER
HARRISBURG - Walk in
the back door of the R.J.
Fried real estate office, turn
right twice through the
yellow halls, walk to the top
of the stairs, and Mel Hert
zler will welcome you to the
new Holstein Association
field office.
The field office program
officially gets underway on
January 1,1981. But already
Hertzler, the Harrisburg
area manager, is in his office
preparing for full-time
operations.
The office, located at 4400
Jonestown Road, Harrisburg
PA 17112, is one of five such
facilities in the country
Jonestown Road also is
known as Rt 39, and the
office is located on the north
side of the road, a few miles
west of 1-81
The Area office is part of a
program to localize Holstein
services and save time and
money
In the Harrisburg area
alone, the new office is ex
pected to save Association
members about $75,000 a
year in travel expenses, car
rentals and airplane tickets
for classifiers and con
sultants
It will allow Holstein
Association employees to get
home almost every
weekend Under the old
system where they worked
out of Brattleboro, Vermont,
employees often were on the
road three weekends of
every month
Scattering offices around
the country also will bring
Holstein officials closer to
the dairymen, Mel Hertzler
points out
The other area field offices
will be located in Louisville,
Kentucky, Eau Claire.
Wisconsm, Kansas City,
Missouri, and Fresno,
California
“We hope we can be a bit
more personal, give better
service, and be in a position
to get feedback from the
farmers,” Hertzler says
The Holstein Association
offers its members about 20
programs. “Maybe some are
not needed, perhaps some
new ones should be started,”
he says, adding that the Area
men are expected to learn
which programs are which
from local farmers
The Harrisburg office will
coordinate activities in the
14 states making up Area I
They include states from
Marne down the coast to
North Carolina, including
West Virginia. The area is
divided into two regions, the
first starting at the New
York-Pennsylvama line and
going north; the second
including Pennsylvania and
states to the south
Six classifiers will be in
each of the two regions, for a
total of 12 classifiers in Area
I
At present the Harrisburg
area has four full-time
classifiers and one part-time
person. Hertzler said the
number will be brought to
six sometime next year.
He noted that 42 percent of
the cows in the United States
which are classified are
classified in Area I.
A big cow state like
Harrisburg regional ofjwe
California represents only
five percent of all
classifications.
Number two area on the
list of number of cows
classified is Area 111 which
includes Minnesota,
Wisconsin, and the two
Dakotas.
Each of the five areas has
about the same number of
cows.
The Area offices will help
Holstein Association em
ployees with paperwork
This will free up consultants
to make more visits to the
farm
It is expected the average
consultant will spend one
day in the office and four on
various farms helping
Association members
The consultants will not
necessarily work out of the
Harrisburg office But
Harrisburg was chosen
because it offers easy access
in and out of the entire
northeastern region
It is central in the 14-state
area, has good Interstate
highways, the Pennsylvania
Turnpike, and an airport
The job descriptions for
Area managers like Hertzler
have not been rigidly
defined By next year,
though, the managers are to
have a good idea of how they
are to work
Several potential
problems were solved for the
Association by going to Area
offices
First, the field staff had
grown to the point where it
was too large to be ad
ministered effectively from
Vermont without adding
more staff there
Secondly, having all
classifiers in an area will
allow Classification
Manager Ronald F
Silverthorn keep a more
uniform nationwide
classification system
Some people feared
breaking the nation into
areas eventually would
mean certain areas would
classify for different traits in
different ways, Hertzler
says
But, he notes, with
classifiers concentrated in
one area it will be easier for
Silverthorn to maintain
contact with the classifiers,
hold more meetings on a
more regular basis, and
keep the needed uniformity
within the breed
Record keeping on cow
histones probably will
continue to be done in
Vermont Registration
cards, at least for the for
seeable future, will be
mailed to Vermont, too
This is because the
National office has the
computer system and
trained people to handle the
registration information.
“After the kinks are ironed
out of the new computer
setup the turn-around time
on registrations should be
much quicker,” Hertzler
promises.
Operating the office with
Hertzler will be his wife,
Suzi, who will act as
secretary In fact, in two of
the Area offices the Area
manager’s wife will act as
secretary, bring her
(Turn to Page A 29)
Five area offices are to open January 1, 1981 to offices at Louisville, Kentucky, Eau Claire,
serve members of the Holstein Association They Wisconsin. Kansas City, Missouri, and Fresno,
include the local Area I office at Harrisburg, and California