Distinguished Service Award

Marlowe Nelson Distinguished Service Award

Ron Sersland, International Protein Sires

Adapted from the presentation by Scott Pralle.

This year’s service award winner has been involved in the dairy industry his entire life. He’s been specifically in the AI industry for around 35 years. For the last 25 years, he has been the owner, and the CEO of International Protein Sires. Raised on a Registered Holstein farm near Decorah, Iowa, this young man was told one day by his father that they needed to sit down and have a hard conversation. It was about how he and his father would keep their farm viable. And the question to him was well, we either need to add more hogs or expand the dairy portion of the farm. For Ron Sersland, this was a very easy decision and the answer obviously was to expand the dairy portion of the farm.

Young Ron felt that something needed to be done to pursue his passion and that also set him on course for the future and for his career. First, Ron headed off to college where he completed the dairy science degree and was a proud graduate of Iowa State University. After college, Ron began his journey working in the AI industry and since 1986 has been involved in international business and travel. In order to fulfill his dream in international business, Ron became fluent in Spanish and Portuguese by completing an intensive language training program in Mexico.

In 1991, Ron and Sandy Sersland began Our Help Inc.. At that time, it was a part-time business. While traveling internationally as an AI sales representative, Ron received praise from clients around the world for products difficult to find outside of the United States. The Serslands founded Our Help as a service to assist international customers to acquire these hard to get items. Unfortunately, three years later in 1994, Sandy passed away and Ron dove into his work and grew Our Help as a service business, centered on the company’s philosophy of providing customers quality products while providing excellent customer service. The company has been involved in several business lines since 1999.

In 1999, Our Help purchased half interest of International Protein Sires from its original founders, Marlowe Nelson and Alvin Piper. These two Wisconsin legends started IPS in 1991 and Ron had known them since his childhood and had tremendous respect for both of them. Ron then became the 100 percent owner of IPS a year later. Today, IPS and genetics is the focus of Our Help and is celebrating its 30th year and is owned by Ron and his wife Nelly. What we may think is a small AI company in today’s terms, IPS has shipped semen to 40 countries and worked with some of the largest agricultural companies and dairy cooperatives around the world.

Domestically, semen is marketed through an extensive network of employees and distributors. Ron has always been involved in every aspect of IPS and has traveled extensively outside of the U.S. developing and nurturing relationships with his international distributors and dairy producers.

Ron’s parents Howard and Carol, if they were still here with us, would be very happy to see that Ron has fulfilled his dream. Ron and Nelly have a daughter, Bailey. She has shown dairy cattle, they have shown as a family and also exhibited cattle at the World Dairy Expo. Bailey also has a passion. She’s a very competitive swimmer in high school and if you can’t find Ron or Nelly in the office, they’re probably out cheering on Bailey at the pool, swim meets, or anything else that Bailey is involved in.

At the end of the day, Ron’s hobby is to talk cows and bulls. Whether it’s with a dairy producer in Argentina, on a farm where he is helping photograph daughters, leading a tour group, or someone texts him or calls the office, Ron never tires of talking about genetics, cow families and how dairy operations can achieve their genetic goals.

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Junior 3-Year-Old Ever-Green-View Ad-Hoc-ET EX-92 Owned by Tom Kestell, Waldo 5-Year-Old Ever-Green-View Amori-ET EX-94 Owned by Tom Kestell, Waldo 6 to 9-Year Olds Ever-Green-View Paree EX-91 Owned by Tom Kestell, Waldo

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