UNION BRIDGE, Md. — Tradition, progress, and Maryland Holstein breeding. All of this and more was on the halter for Chip Savage of Union Bridge with senior 3-year-old Md-Locustcrest P Zuriniah (EX-92 95-MS). She won her class, was declared intermediate champion and ultimately reserve grand champion of the International Holstein Show at World Dairy Expo on Friday, Oct. 2 in Madison, Wisconsin.

Her story reaches generations deep across a 20-mile radius of Carroll and Frederick counties in Maryland — connecting cow families and families of cow people.

“You can take the term cow families, talking about cows and also about families who have cows. I’d say we got the best of both that day,” said Tom Mercuro, DVM, a partner in Zuriniah with Chip and his sons.

“Leading the cow that does what she did, it’s the biggest rush,” Chip added during a Farmshine phone interview a few days later. “I’m still on cloud nine. That adrenaline continues even though I am tired.”

He later confirmed this ranks “number one unforgettable show moment” for him, his family, and his friend Tom.

A cow in the barnyard

Zuriniah’s road to Madison began when Chip, an independent Semex representative, dropped off a sire catalog in early 2025 at the nearby farm of John Michael Myers. He wasn’t home, but the cow was.

“I always look. He’s got a nice herd of cows,” Chip recalled. “This cow was just standing there, and I was blown away.”

Myers had just undergone hip surgery when Chip called to buy her and told him to come back in a week. By April 2025, Chip had returned with his sons Chase and Connor.

“She was the first animal that my sons have written checks to buy with me,” he said. Long-time friend Tom Mercuro later joined the partnership, and they dug into what was behind the cow.

“Tom asked me ‘what do we have for a dam and granddam?’ Well, guess what? They’re all in that herd,” Chip pointed out. Multiple animals and generations were right there in Myers’ 40-cow milking herd. “Three just fabulous cows, matured in a very commercial environment. Wide, deep. Not that they are tall — they’re not small cows — but more wide and deep.”

Zuriniah’s dam, Md-Locustcrest Doplr Zurini, now EX-93, was sold to Golden Oaks Farm in Wauconda, Illinois, where Chip has done consulting. Her next dam, Md-Locustcrest Doc Zuri, remains at her home farm and is now EX-95, according to Chip and Tom.

Roots go back to Windsor-Manor

Her maternal line goes back to the breeding of Jason and Donna Myers near New Windsor and the family of Windsor-Manor Star Zara (EX-91 2E). One branch produced Zuriniah’s ancestor Windsor-Manor Jolt Zita. Her maternal sister was the influential Windsor-Manor Rudolph Zip (EX-95 4E GMD DOM), who exceeded 200,000 pounds lifetime milk and became a prolific brood cow.

Zuriniah brings the old cow family forward with new genetics as a daughter of Siemers Rengd Parfect-ET from the EX-93 Doppler Zurini x EX-95 Doc x VG Brash x VG-88 Olympian x GP Windbrook x EX-91 Goldwyn x VG-86 Finley x EX-93 Machoman x VG-87 Jolt sister to Rudolph Zip.

“Chip and I were all over the genomics of this cow,” Tom said. “The strength she exhibits, the milk she makes, the length of her teats and the placement — it’s all spelled out right there in her genomic platform. This is what the breed needs: moderate size, width, four-square teats on a level bottom and a great attachment. What else do you really want a cow to do?”

Zuriniah freshened with her second calf in March and has been milking 125 to 150 pounds per day, Chip said. “She likes to eat. She can live in any environment, but don’t get between her and the feed bunk.”

She may have a box stall at home, but she is equally content on pasture at night with the other cows or in the sand-bedded freestalls, where he finds her most mornings.

Tom calls her “the modern show cow — moderate in height, very strong from front to rear. Perfect udder for robots and for anybody putting a milker on a cow. By no way is she a princess cow that needs pampered. She gets it done.”

In the ring, Judge Ryan Krohlow and Associate Judge Kelly Barbee saw it too.

“When you see that cow coming at you, like Michael used to say, she’s coming at you like a Mack truck,” said Krohlow, invoking the memory of the great cowman and judge from Maryland, the late Michael Heath. “That cow’s got so much width of chest, tracks so straight, so free on both front and rear feet and legs.”

He also praised her level udder floor, square front teat placement, and “perfect seam right up the back.”

“Everyone that had been through the barn, regardless of whether or not she won, decided she was the cow they wanted to take home with them to fit any situation,” Tom said.

Not everyone saw that potential earlier. “A couple people said: ‘Oh, she’s too small to show,’” Chip recalled, glad others passed her by.

Even her name prompted some fun during the interview. Asked how to pronounce Zuriniah, Tom didn’t hesitate:

“You just say ‘Best Cow in the World.’
 It’s that simple.”

“Many international visitors at Expo weren’t sure how to say it either, “so they got to calling her ‘Big Z.’”

For Chip and Tom, this deeply Maryland cow reflects a broader move toward balance and function in the show ring — cows that can compete at the highest level, with strength and capacity to work in an everyday commercial environment.

Shown only three times, Zuriniah debuted at the 2025 All-American Dairy Show in Harrisburg as fall senior 2-year-old winner, intermediate champion and reserve grand. At the 2025 World Dairy Expo a few weeks later, she again won her class and was honorable mention intermediate, later earning Unanimous All-American.

This year, Chip decided to only take her to Madison, believing in the cow and hoping to win the senior 3-year old class and intermediate champion prize. She did that, including best udder, then competed against the field of elite older cows to garner reserve grand.

Her breeder John Mike had watched the livestream at home through intermediate champion, then went back to milking. Someone called later to congratulate him on breeding the reserve grand. “What are you talking about?” was his reaction, Chip recounted. “He didn’t have a clue. He was out milking his cows.”

The cow and her history have stayed remarkably close to home. GVA, Mercuro Farms and Md-Locustcrest, along with earlier generations of Windsor-Manor roots, are clustered around the Carroll-Frederick county line.

At GVA (Grand View Acres) Chip and his family milk a small group of show cows and operate a farm store with fresh ice cream, home-raised beef and pork and his wife’s sourdough bread. “For my kids to be employed here, we had to add something different,” he explained.

Mercuro Farms milks about 500 cows at three locations and does extensive ET and IVF work. Tom is also involved in United Sires, a dairyman-owned genetics group.

“I’ve done work with three generations of Chip’s family and have owned cows with all three,” Tom said. “Despite declining cow numbers Maryland continues to kick out show winners, great genomic cattle. It’s just great breeders.”

The next cow family

For Chip, dairying goes back at least five generations with his sons, while the sixth, his grandchildren, are already watching. “To have Tom and Emma and my family, my parents, my two sons, my wife that’s by my side all the time, and my two grandkids out there in the pictures in the ring at Expo meant a lot,” he affirmed.

The next generation of Zuriniah’s cow family is also coming on. Mercuro Farms handles much of the ET and IVF work with her and her granddam. Four daughters are already on the ground and three sons are coming, with some planned for United Sires.

“We milk what we make. We all rely on the milk check at the end of the day, just like all of our customers do,” Tom said. “We think this cow can impact the commercial side, which is why we exhibit cattle. Not just to win a ribbon, but to show cattle that can really perform and function in any environment, in any herd.”

Zuriniah heads next to the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto and is bred back for next year’s Expo, with more IVF work planned at her GVA home, just a few miles in one direction from where she was bred and a few miles the other way from where her lineage began, as the family now carries future generations forward.