Are you using one of the best tools available on a dairy farm to solve potential problems and move the business forward? Are we talking about a new product? Service? Technology? Not in this article. Instead, we are focusing on a time-tested – and often underutilized – tool on the dairy: a properly run employee meeting.

Many of my dairy meetings, employee training and work-site audits involve some type of discussion about dairy workers’ wages, salaries or incentives. Often this question comes from dairy workers. In my opinion, it is because at a majority of dairy farms the rules about this topic are not clear, creating confusion and frustration for employees.

Imagine this scenario: You produce high-quality milk. You take pride in receiving your quality premiums for low preliminary incubation (PI) counts. Your system is clean, you use high-quality chemicals in the right amounts, and you check that your wash cycles are running correctly on a regular basis.

It’s that time of year where we are wrapping up 2013 and are looking ahead to the next season. For most farms, we are taking a hard look at the financials, upcoming costs and equipment purchases. It’s also the time to review our current structure, team and management practices to ensure we are set up for success for the upcoming year.

Strategic vaccination programs are an important component of herd health management for dairy operations. A successful vaccination program should reduce the incidence and limit the effects of disease in the herd while minimizing adverse health and production effects in vaccinated animals.

The historical mindset in measuring a dairy cow’s productivity is to look at pounds of milk produced per cow. As we all know, productivity measured in those terms has increased significantly over the years and continues to do so. Average U.S. milk production per cow has doubled in the past 50 years. But are the components in the milk – fat, protein and solids-not-fat – increasing along with milk pounds?

Recent trends across the U.S. suggest that while the number of dairies has been decreasing steadily, those remaining are increasing in size. Although this presents new challenges in relation to herd management, it also means new challenges in regards to human-resource management.

When was the last time you were frustrated with an employee? Perhaps it was this morning. Perhaps it has occurred too many times with a particular employee. We are so busy on the farm, the milking can’t wait, so much to get done and there is never enough time.

I’ve always liked politics – but I’m not so sure anymore. Every time I turn on the news, it appears that our country’s political differences run deeper and deeper every year. I know, times aren’t really all that different from the past. But from where I sit, it seems like our country is divided over almost every issue.

I am sitting in a conference room with a company’s CEO and his father. The father is the founder and chairman of the board. I had made a presentation about performing an organizational development evaluation for their business to help them focus their investment on people.