The Lambs sold her at their 2019 Spring Sensations Sale, bought her back in 2022, and rode her to 178,000 lbs lifetime and three Eastern Fall National banners. Worth the round trip.
Holstein Association USA just handed its top honor to a cow who wasn’t supposed to come home again. Oakfield Solomon Sunset-ET EX-96 2E is the 2025 Star of the Breed—bred by Jonathan and Alicia Lamb at Oakfield Corners Dairy in western New York, sold to Adam Liddle in 2019, and bought back three years later when it became obvious she was the one that got away.
This isn’t a lifetime achievement handshake. The Star of the Breed is the only award in the Registered Holstein® world that forces a cow to deliver in the barn and the ring—top-five at a National show, a completed lactation in the last year, TriStar enrollment, and an official classification score. No split-decision winners.
The Numbers That Got Her There
Sunset’s qualifying five-year-old record is the kind of line most barn managers would frame:
- 51,710 lbs milk
- 2,087 lbs fat at 4.0%
- 1,674 lbs protein at 3.2%
- Third, Aged Cow Class, 2025 Northeast Spring Holstein Show
- 178,000+ lbs lifetime milk and still counting
“The cow milks like crazy,” Alicia Lamb says. “She’s a beautiful cow—one of our greatest show cows we’ve had over the years.”
Show Herd Manager Jamie Black, who looks after her every day, puts it plainer: “She’s a cow that grabs your attention as soon as you look at her. She looks like a cow that works hard every day and does it easy.”
The Buy-Back Story
Start with the dam. The Lambs bought Bella-Rosa GW Sara-ET EX-96 3E at the 2013 National Holstein Convention Sale—a cow Alicia describes as “not the prototypical show cow at the time. She wasn’t super tall. But she was just perfectly balanced.” Sara later did her damage at Madison in her later years.
By 2019, Sara had thrown a fall group of Solomon, Avalanche, and High Octane daughters. Oakfield Corners dropped three of Sara’s fall calves into the ring together at the Spring Sensations Sale on choice. Adam Liddle took first pick—and then agreed to take all of them. Sunset went with him.
The Lambs saw her again as a fresh two-year-old at the Greenwich state show. Asked the price. She wasn’t bred. They walked. When she calved as a three-year-old, they came back and brought her home in 2022.
How often does a breeder get a second shot at a cow that turns into a national champion? Almost never.
Harrisburg, Three Years Running
Jamie doesn’t sugarcoat the early days. “Her first big show, she didn’t pay at the New York State show. We went to Harrisburg and I basically walked her backwards the whole time, because she just was not having any.”
Then she figured it out.
- 2022 Eastern Fall National — First in class, Grand Champion, Best Bred & Owned, Supreme Bred & Owned
- 2023 Eastern Fall National — First in class, Grand Champion, Best Bred & Owned
- 2024 Eastern Fall National — First in class, Reserve Grand (beat by Candy Cane), Best Bred & Owned
- 2025 Northeast Spring Show — Bred & Owned winner, a full year in milk when the judge questioned it
Three straight Best Bred & Owned titles at Harrisburg. “Probably one of the proudest things we as breeders have in our inventory,” Jamie says.
The Classification Day That Almost Wasn’t
Sunset’s EX-96 moment nearly didn’t happen. “She had been put up once before and had one of her sunset days, where she didn’t want to do anything right,” Jamie recalls. The classifier came back around the next visit. She passed “very easy.”
The tell, Jamie says: “Every time you walk in the barn, she looks the exact same.”
The Pedigree Behind Her
Sunset’s by Solomon—a bull Jonathan describes as “popular for a bit, dropped off, then came back once a few daughters calved.” Behind Sara sits Linette Spend Deed EX-90, and behind her Spending Spirit EX-95, honorable mention All-American Aged Cow. “A lot of All-American in the pedigree. Very deep.”
The Breeding Philosophy
Jonathan isn’t chasing the tallest cow in the tent, and he’ll tell you so.
“We don’t want to have the biggest, but we want to have the most correct. And we certainly want them to have plenty of width and power and strength.”
Jamie’s description of Sunset lines up exactly: “A balanced cow with extremely open, dairy, sweeping rib. Massive cow with a lot of width, not extremely tall, but very dairy, feminine, clean-boned, silky-hided.”
Translation for anyone still stuck on stature: functional type is winning again.
Is She Transmitting?
Early signs say yes. Adam Liddle has an EX Tattoo daughter that keeps gaining points each scoring. The Lambs’ favorite mating so far is Crushable, which produced two daughters inside the top three at National shows in milking form this past year. Every other Crushable daughter they have is still a two-year-old.
“Her calves and heifers in the hutches—they all have the same look,” Jamie says. “Very striking. Deep-ribbed, hard-topped, good-legged heifers.”
Jonathan tempers the hype appropriately. “Those were our first daughters from her. They’re turning three this year, so very young. It’s going to be a lot of fun as more of her daughters calve.”
What’s Next for Sunset
She flushes consistently—not extreme, but “every time we flush, we’re going to get at least one or two calves,” Jonathan says. She’s still milking well. She still looks incredible. The open question in the Oakfield office right now: one more show, or keep her home, happy, and healthy?
“We’ll make a decision fairly soon.”
How the Award Actually Works
Most people nod along at “Star of the Breed” without knowing the filter. Here’s the real one, in place since 2007:
- Top-five placing at a National Holstein Show
- Completed lactation within the last year
- Herd enrolled in the TriStar℠ program
- Official classification score on file
From the eligible pool, HAUSA runs this calculation:
Combined ME Fat and Protein + Age-Adjusted Classification Score × (Breed Average ME CFP ÷ Breed Average Age-Adjusted Score)
A weighted blend that refuses to let a show queen with mediocre components win, and refuses to let a component monster with a weak udder win either. Both, or nothing.
Oakfield Corners, By the Numbers
Jonathan is a 12th-generation farmer—his family has been farming in the U.S. since arriving from England roughly 200 years ago, most of it in western New York. Today, Oakfield Corners milks about 11,000 cows across four locations: three in western New York, one in western Ohio. The marketing strategy runs on two parallel tracks: gTPI/NM$ index cattle aimed at the next sire dam, and show-cow matings engineered for marketable heifers through sales like Spring Sensations.
Jonathan’s operating principle, straight from the podcast: “Continual improvement. Find the bottlenecks, fix them, move on to the next ones.”
What Recognition Means Here
“It’s humbling,” Alicia says. “For a cow we’ve bred and worked with, and a cow family we really love and appreciate, to be recognized at this level—it’s a great honor for us. A great honor for Sunset.”
Jonathan frames it against Sara’s legacy. “We didn’t bring Sara to national shows because we didn’t think she was big enough at times. Sunset is a little more modern—not one of these huge cows either—but excessive in width and power and strength. That exemplifies the type of cows we’re trying to breed today.”
The Orlando Recognition
Sunset will be officially honored at Holstein Association USA’s 140th Annual Meeting, part of the 2026 National Holstein Convention in Orlando, Florida, June 22–25. Registration is open through May 20, with two new all-inclusive packages this year. Details at holsteinconvention.com. Deeper profile in the Spring 2026 issue of The Pulse, plus the full Holstein Connections podcast episode at linktr.ee/holsteinconnections.
For the Lambs, Jamie Black, and anyone still arguing that balanced, correct, hard-working cows don’t win anymore—Sunset just made the case louder than any catalog page could.
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