Bosside Holsteins was founded in 1990 when John & Tineke Boschma and their children moved from Marum, The Netherlands to Irishtown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. There, we milked 30 cows (some of whose genetics are still present in the current milking herd) and farmed 100 acres. After 3 years there, it was time for a move to a larger farm where there was more room for expansion.

In 1993 we moved to Lot 16, Prince Edward Island where we now farmed 200 acres and could milk up to 70 cows. We made a number of rennovations to that farm including: single 8 parallel parlor, straw pack barn, and covered bunkers, and also purchased a neigboring farm with an extra 100 acres, barns & farm home. On this farmstead, yet another problem arose - any further expansion was almost impossible as the cost of purchasing additional milk qouta was hardly possible for the number of extra cows it would allow us to milk.

As a result, in August of 2002, John, Tineke and Hank and Janie moved to a farm in Colby Wisconsin, USA, where milk quota issues would no longer hold the farm expansion back. This farm consisted of 308 acres, 90 tie stalls with a pipeline milk system. The manure storage consisted of a clay lined pit. We brought with us a total of 110 head of our finest animals, mostly being young breeding stock. We also brought some of our machinery and equipment. In the fall of 2004 we constructed a second free-stall barn with capacity for 90 head of milking cows, as well as a maternity pen, calf pen, commodity shed, and manure storage facility for the 140 cow barn.

In the summer of 2005 we will be adding a 208 x 44 heifer barn with a dry cow section, which will put our total capacity at 500 head and will also be improving the manure storage system.

We have recently decided to run the farm with just our family and concentrate mainly on improving the quality of our herd, instead of focusing on increasing our total numbers, with a goal to have a quality sale in 2010 and to sell more genetics in the mean time.