As a dairy veterinarian and nutritionist that has been training dairy employees for more than 12 years, I have been interested in identifying what makes a group of dairy employees better than another. I also often find myself observing how employees work in other businesses as well. Since it seems that at most businesses “everything happens through people,” when I am at a hardware store, bank or simply getting a cheeseburger, I make an effort to recognize what key factors make a particular employee group excellent.

Is your dairy gearing for success, or does it look like an episode of Jersey Shore – a TV show that has been poked fun at by everyone from Jay Leno to Fox News because its cast of characters collectively have an IQ of 100? Hopefully your dairy has been planning well for the future. Do you know what steps to take to build a new reality? Let’s see how this might work in two different practical dairy applications. Dry-off “Why has cow #2882 not been dried off yet?!?!” This exclamation came to me as I once talked with my herdsman. My consternation? We have a regular “plan” as to when we dry our cows off weekly (every Tuesday). Our target date was 50 days dry and here this cow was already 40 days before calving. The herdsman’s explanation was, “She’s still making 65 pounds a day.”

We can spend thousands or even millions of dollars building a milking parlor and milking equipment system that will perform every day exactly as we want. We can adjust the take-off settings, the pulsation rate, and the vacuum level. We can have an information system that gathers important data about every cow that is milked so that we can respond to any changes in her performance appropriately. We can buy or harvest high-quality forages that have little variation in moisture or composition. We can control our fans, sprinklers, and curtains to help ensure that cows are comfortable.

Dairies have been adopting new technologies for generations. Our grandparents or great-grandparents may have been among the first in the area to use a milking machine or A.I. Can you imagine dairying today without bulk tanks and refrigeration, or automatic waterers? Now, robotic milkers and computerized calf feeding systems are becoming common. Makes you wonder what tools the next generation of progressive dairies will use. Which brings us to some critical questions: How do you, as a dairy manager, decide which technologies are right for your operation? Do you go with something that has the most enticing advertising? Or the one recently purchased by the most innovative dairy you know?

Getting and keeping good help is a key attribute for any successful business, but things do not always go as smoothly as they could or should. “When we are not satisfied with the work of one of our employees, very often we can point the finger right back at us,” said Brian Vulgamore, a producer in western Kansas. “It is often a lack of training on our part, or not enough time given for the employee to complete the task.” And while there are no bulletproof guides to hire and manage employees, here are a few suggestions to put good luck on your side.

Here is the charge: “The Chicago Mercantile Exchange cash cheese market is responsible for the failure of milk prices over the last several years.” Those making the charge claim the CME is “thin” with less than 1 percent of cheese priced through its market. Other charges include shady prices when there is no trade (unfilled higher bids and uncovered lower offers) and few market players. Those two elements combined result in the opportunity, if not actuality, of cheese price manipulation and, through that, milk. The CME and its supporters respond that the cash cheese market represents a perfectly honest method to handle the spot market needs by being a market of last resort for buyers and sellers of cheese. It reports actual activity and represents a price for spot cheese and nothing more. What others do with the information is their choice.

Over the past 10 years, we’ve seen every TV network focus a lot of its new programming on reality shows. I don’t watch a lot of TV, and I’m not a huge fan of most reality shows. But in the past couple of years, I’ll admit that I’ve come to enjoy some of the reality-based shows on the “Big 3” networks. The ones that have caught my attention recently are Extreme Home Makeover, Undercover Boss, and The Biggest Loser. I don’t have time to watch all of them, but I’ll admit that my DVR is set to record Undercover Boss whenever it’s on! In every one of these shows, the main characters reach out to ordinary people who are struggling to fulfill a dream, get back on their feet or regain control of their lives. Sure, some of these shows have been criticized for the way they “overdo” the assistance they provide. And I’ll admit, I tend to agree sometimes. But generally speaking, these shows set out to give the underdog an opportunity that wouldn’t usually be available to them.

Many dairy producers think through their business decisions using some kind of “what if” scenario. For example, “what if I change the ration, and then hot weather hits?” It’s a type of thinking that helps to remove the emotional bias. This method weighs the pros and cons of a decision by projecting a real dollars-and-cents outcome. Partial budgets are a handy tool that can help you make specific decisions about your dairy. They can be performed on a multitude of decisions, including feed program changes, reproduction programs, cropping operation’s enterprise effects on the dairy and so on. The economic power these that spreadsheets (or handwritten budgets) have on a dairy can be a very useful, and sometimes eye-opening, event.