The Wisconsin State Board of Control was established soon after Wisconsin became the thirtieth US state. The School for the Blind was started in 1849, and a State Prison at Waupun was approved by the legislature in 1850. A School for Deaf Children was provided for in 1854. That same year the legislature approved hospital facilities for the insane. During the early 1860s, inmates at the Waupun prison began to learn skills such as tailoring, furniture construction, shoe making and cabinetry. Revenue from these ventures were adequate to meet financial needs without state appropriations. In 1885, the State purchased 112 acres near the prison at Waupun, and prisoners began to learn farming and livestock raising skills. The philosophy was that farm work could serve as a form of rehabilitation for residents and would produce much needed food for the facilities. By the 1920s, the State of Wisconsin owned more than 7,000 acres of land and livestock herds at more than a dozen locations. However, state appointed boards often fail at farming and the Wisconsin institutions were no exception. Years of neglect and an over-ambitious continual sowing of cash crops had depleted the soil of most of the farms. There was no coordination of farm activities and former boards had ignored or had no definite check on the mounting farm problems. In a 1924 report, legislative visiting committees severely criticized institutional farm management and pointed out neglect and mismanagement. A new philosophy of institutional management by the Board of Control was recommended. In the spring of 1924, the Board of Control appointed Glen Householder as farm supervisor and inaugurated the integration and centralization of all farm activities. Householder had worked as a County Agent in Minnesota and Wisconsin and was well-versed in farming and the dairy industry. He also was a strong advocate for purebred Holsteins and saw an opportunity to convert Wisconsin’s institutional farms into models of modern agriculture and dairy farming. By 1928, over 700 Holstein cows (mostly registered) were in production with a total population of 1,246 cattle including bulls and heifers. That year, Wisconsin State institution farms produced over 271,604 pounds of meat, excluding poultry. By 1935, production had increased to 601,063 pounds of meat, 16,830 pounds of poultry and 43,574 dozen eggs were produced on the farms and brought into institution kitchens. Institutional herds helped establish Wisconsin as America’s Dairyland. Using state funds, cattle from the herds were transported in railroad boxcars to fairs and expositions as far west as Portland, Oregon and even into Canada. In 1934, a bull calf named Wisconsin Admiral Burke Lad was born at the Green Bay Reformatory. The calf was sold to the Utah Industrial School as a follow-up to a bull named Wisconsin Pinky , also a product of the Green Bay herd. As “Burke Lad’s daughters began to complete records, his fame spread and it was realized he was no ordinary bull. Fred Pabst, owner of Pabst Brewing Company needed a herd sire at his farm near Oconomowoc, Wisconsin and in 1942, he bought “Burke Lad” back to Wisconsin where he was used as one of the first bulls to breed cows using the novel idea of artificial insemination. Although “Burke Lad” died in 1945, his fame continued for several decades and his offspring became sires and bull mothers for the next generations of the world’s best Holsteins. During the late 1940s and 1950s, the birthplace of “Burke Lad” at the Wisconsin Reformatory in Green Bay became a grotto of genetics as dairymen and artificial insemination centers from throughout North America journeyed to Wisconsin for outstanding cattle. Today, millions of Holstein cattle carry at least a “smidgen” of blood from Wisconsin Admiral Burke Lad .