Jim Van Patter has managed large dairy herds from Wisconsin to Turkey to Australia to Mississippi and back again. He's now the dairy manager at Nehls Brothers Farm near Juneau, Wisconsin, and he's brought home some hard-won lessons about what works at scale – and what doesn't.

Whether you're running 100 cows or 1,000, Jim's got practical insights on everything from labor management to facility design that you can put to work on your operation.


This episode is brought to you by Dairy Management Inc.

DMI - Dairy Checkoff

The Your Dairy Checkoff podcast is a collaboration between national and local checkoff organizations to showcase examples of how dairy promotion programs are working together to build dairy sales and consumer trust in today’s changing marketplace to maximize dairy farmers’ checkoff investment.

Episodes will explore local, national and global dairy promotion, including consumer research, dairy nutrition, science and issue updates. Farmers guide the selection of topics through listener feedback.

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Season 7, Episode 59


Here is the episode breakdown:

  • 1:30 – Where are all the places you’ve been in the world throughout your dairy career?
  • 3:30 – What have you learned in your career?
  • 7:25 – What do you know you need to do to make each day the best it can be?
  • 8:40 – How do you stay positive on your dairy?
  • 12:25 – What’s one fallacy about cows that you’ve experienced in your career?
  • 15:30 – What’s a metric that you once thought was important but you’ve changed your mind on?
  • 17:00 – What’s a technology you’re interested in?
  • 18:40 – What are the key metrics for your current farm?
  • 22:30 – Talk about your farm’s breeding strategy.
  • 28:00 – How much of the potential of today’s cows are we capturing as an industry?
  • 30:30 – What advice do you have for up-and-coming managers?


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