Metzger to Retire from National Jersey Organizations
Erick Metzger has announced that he will retire from the American Jersey Cattle Association (AJCA) and National All-Jersey Inc. (NAJ) effective October 1, 2024.
Metzger has devoted more than four decades of service to the purebred dairy cattle industry, 32 of them with the national Jersey organizations. He initially worked in the herd services department and then with NAJ, the organization’s milk marketing arm.
Over those years, he helped the Jersey organizations develop programs and processes that expedited the registration process, streamlined the collection of identification and production data and leveraged new technology to enhance parentage verification. He helped to initiate research that validated the advantages of Jersey cows and Jersey milk and launched a workshop series that showed producers how to capitalize on both with on-farm processing. He rallied the troops in the battle to get multiple-component pricing more broadly adopted in Federal Milk Marketing Orders (FMMOs) and to otherwise get fair prices for Jersey milk. In this effort, he made more than 150 trips since 2009, testified at five FMMO hearings, and organized five trips to Capitol Hill that allowed producers to visit one-on-one with members of Congress.
In summing up his service, Neal Smith, executive secretary and CEO, said, “Erick always had high expectations of himself and those around him. He tackled every job with enthusiasm and a strong drive to succeed. His outstanding work ethic and determination inspired others for greater accomplishments. For three decades, he has been a rock on the Jersey team, and Jersey breeders have REAPED the benefits of his dedicated service.”
Metzger grew up on Raintree Farm in northern Indiana, where his family milked 40 registered Guernsey cows and sold milk marketed with the Golden Guernsey label. Though he initially worked with the other Channel Islands dairy breed, his exposure to Jersey programs came early. Raintree Farm was one of the first to participate in the joint Guernsey-Jersey functional type traits appraisal program, with Al Meyer scoring the herd in 1979.
Metzger and his five older siblings were raised by parents who also taught school along with their farm responsibilities. He was active with 4-H and FFA, serving as president of both. A quiet, analytical child raised in a state that touts itself as the “home” of basketball, Metzger played the sport in his youth, but he developed a lifelong passion for another sport—baseball—listening to Cincinnati Reds games broadcast by WLW.
His love of baseball was so strong that he considered a vocation in sports management. However, since it was a challenging field to break into, he chose a more secure path and earned an undergraduate degree in animal science from Purdue University in 1982. In his junior year, he was high individual in the Jersey breed at the dairy judging contest at World Dairy Expo, where he crossed paths with his future boss, Maurice E. Core, the official for the Jersey classes.
After graduation, he moved to Columbus, Ohio, to begin a career working for the American Guernsey Association. His office in the building on South Hamilton Road was not just new to him, but to the organization as well, which moved from Peterborough, N.H., to Columbus to share office space with the American Jersey Cattle Club (AJCA predecessor) in January 1983. Metzger was hired as the records department assistant and became executive secretary in 1987.
While working at South Hamilton Road, another impactful event occurred for Metzger—meeting his future bride, Patty Callahan, who worked across the aisle in the performance department at the AJCC. They married in 1984.
The office-sharing scenario ended in 1988 when the AJCC built and moved into its current office in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, and the Guernsey association found office space elsewhere. Metzger joined the team at the AJCC in November 1992 as superintendent of records. Reporting to Executive Secretary Core, he was responsible for registrations, performance programs and computer operations.
One of the most impactful programs he helped to develop, market and manage was REAP—a comprehensive service package that includes registrations, contributions to Equity, appraisals and performance testing. Attesting to its value is the fact that 91% of the herds on performance programs today are enrolled on REAP.
Metzer also supervised the transition of data processing to an internet-intranet system that enabled round-the-clock registration services and on-demand pedigrees, ultimately named infoJersey.com. He also initiated programs that allowed Jersey breeders to use American ID tags and JerseyTags as permanent identification for registration rather than tattoos and introduced Data Collection Ratings to production records as a measure of testing frequency.
A decade into his Jersey career, his responsibilities shifted somewhat to accommodate a tremendous demand for computer services. In July 2003, management of computer operations was passed to Mark Chamberlain, who headed the newly created information technology department. To Metzger’s plate was added the job of field service coordinator.
With nearly 20 years of breed association experience covering nearly every service area, Metzger was a good fit for the role, which included oversight of a 12-person team that provided on-site support for the entire line of AJCA and NAJ services.
A year later, when colleague Mike Brown vacated his position as general manager of NAJ, he was asked to take on that role as well along with his duties as field service coordinator and supervisor of the department now known as herd services.
The milk marketing responsibility was a natural progression for Metzger. At that point in his career, he was up for a challenge and learning something new, and the Jersey organizations needed him.
In a press release announcing the promotion, Smith noted, “NAJ has always depended upon leadership from a person who knows the dairy industry inside and out. Erick is uniquely qualified to head a company that promotes the idea that quality milk, equitable markets and awareness of consumer desires are basic to the future of the dairy industry. He understands what we do and why we do it.”
Just six months into his new position, Metzger called on that experience to testify at his first FMMO hearing, one aimed to amend the pooling provisions of the Central FMMO. He urged the secretary of agriculture to reject the proposal as it would unfairly impact producers of high-component milk. He shared his own story of how market-wide pooling had dramatically reduced the price his family received for their Golden Guernsey milk even though it was a superior product in high demand.
Though the Order was amended, Metzger was not deterred. During his career, he testified at four additional FMMO hearings to even the playing field for producers of high-component milk, including the recent hearing to adjust pricing formulas, which is still in progress.
Supervision of the field service team was taken off Metzger’s plate in June 2006, with oversight eventually landing on the shoulders of the manager of Jersey Marketing Service, Herby Lutz, and his newly hired assistant, Daniel Bauer. With the move, Metzger had more bandwidth to focus on AJCA programs and NAJ.
Metzger led the herd services team during a time of tremendous growth. He was at the helm when registrations surpassed 94,000 in 2008, breaking the record previously set in 1953, and when they reached a historical high of 184,957 in 2017. This past year, registrations numbered more than 123,000, cows enrolled on REAP surpassed 150,000 and the appraiser team scored more than 100,000 animals for the 11th consecutive year.
Among the NAJ-funded research projects initiated under his watch were the ground-breaking Capper-Cady sustainability study, first released by the authors in 2010 and updated by Dr. Frank Mitloehner with the University of California-Davis in 2022, and the A2 milk study completed by his alma mater, Purdue, in 2020.
To educate Jersey producers interested in processing their own milk and marketing it directly to consumers, Jersey Value-Added 101 Workshops were held in St. Charles, Mo., in 2017, Dayton, Ohio, in 2018, and Brattleboro, Vt., in 2019. A fourth workshop was planned in Bettendorf, Iowa, but canceled days before due to the pandemic.
Metzger also helped to organize Constituent Day on Capitol Hill to kick off the annual meetings held in Alexandria, Va., in 2014, resulting in two busloads of Jersey folks meeting with members of Congress and staff from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In the years that followed, fly-ins to Washington D.C. were organized so members could meet with Congressional representatives in 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2023.
Given his childhood environment, education and learning were important to Metzger. He cheered on Patty when she chose to switch careers and helped her study for her master’s of social work, which she received from Ohio State University in 1997. Two years later, he earned a Master of Business Administration with top honors from Franklin University, specializing in international business.
Outside the national Jersey organizations, Metzger is a former president of the National Dairy Shrine and sat on boards of the National Purebred Dairy Cattle Association and the National Pedigreed Livestock Council. He is a founding chair of U.S. Livestock Genetics Export Inc.
Metzger earned a Distinguished Alumni Award for lifetime achievements from Purdue University’s Department of Animal Sciences in 2013.
In retirement, Erick and Patty will have more time for travel. Plans include river cruises, a trip to New York City, and anywhere his siblings, nieces and nephew want to go.
For Erick, there will also be more time for another passion—classic rock and roll—along with his beloved baseball. Perhaps he will make a trip to the Great American Ball Park, home of baseball’s first professional franchise, where he purchased a brick paver in the newly constructed stadium in 2003. Located in Crosley Terrace, section 30, it is inscribed, “Thank you Mom, Dad and Patty for indulging my passion for the Cincinnati Reds.”
