One of the most challenging actions for business owners to take is to transfer some of their responsibilities to someone else. Most owners tend to be fiercely independent, driven by a clear purpose and focused on specific goals.

On every dairy, misunderstandings like this happen, sometimes in dosing, sometimes in colostrum feeding, sometimes in milking prep or tagging calves. While some missteps can be costly, almost all point back to the same root cause: people hearing and interpreting protocols differently.

The parlor is a critical place on a dairy to have productivity and efficiency dialed in 365 days a year. When it comes to leveling up your parlor output, audits are a helpful tool in finding ways to fine-tune and uncover areas for improvement that drive milk harvest success – ultimately impacting the dairy’s bottom line. 

Protocols on a dairy farm are essential for a smooth, organized workflow, ensuring safety and efficiency for cows and farm staff. They maintain high health and well-being standards by supporting proper animal care and management.

I graduated college thinking I had learned everything I would need to know to be successful in a career in animal science. My first job as a calf-raising manager on a large calf ranch showed me that was far from the truth. I’m not saying college didn’t prepare me. It’s that I never would have expected to fail as much as I did.

While it is possible to have SOPs for many important tasks on a dairy farm, there are few more important than milking parlor procedures. 

I now view the common risk factors for disease – such as failure of passive transfer, dirty facilities and feeding equipment, cold stress and poor nutrition – as symptoms of a lack of proactive, structured monitoring programs designed to track protocol compliance as well as calf performance.

For these three Pennsylvania dairy producers, their stories are each very different but have one commonality: working full-time on their family’s dairy operation wasn’t always their dream.