During the week of Jan. 4, 13 students, including myself, Micheala Slind, from the University of Wisconsin and one of our dairy science instructors, Ted Halbach, spent a large amount of time with Purina staff from around the Midwest in a series of learning opportunities.

Our week started out with an on-farm audit at United Dreams Dairy located in the Baraboo area, where we worked alongside Purina staff and the farm owners, Tim and Lisa Evert and Rick and Ronda Lehman, to evaluate their farm practices and investigate areas of improvement throughout their operation.

This audit was an extraordinary learning experience for all of us, as many of my classmates come from dairy farms and are always looking to improve practices on their own farms. During our visit, we walked alongside an individual from Purina who was an expert in their field. Areas that we visited covered each level of the dairy cow’s life, all the way from birth to heifers, yearlings, lactating cows and transition cows to make the full loop.

After leaving the farm, our group headed to Wisconsin Dells to collaborate on our findings and get a presentation ready for the farmer. In addition to preparing for our presentation to United Dreams Dairy, we also attended the Leading Dairy Producer Conference that was hosted by Land O’ Lakes Purina. Throughout the next two days, our group attended a variety of sessions about calves, transition cows, ketosis and other hot topics in the dairy industry.

Following the conference, our group traveled to St. Louis, Missouri, to continue experiencing the Purina way of life and all the company has to offer. Many different conversations were had during the six-hour trip south; however, it seemed that all of them stemmed around how impressed we were with how Purina treated us. We had only spent two and a half days with them up to this point, and all of us could not believe how welcomed we felt and that Purina truly invested this whole week in us. The best was yet to come for most of the group, however.

The two remaining days of our week-long experience brought us to the Animal Nutrition Center to continue building our knowledge of both the company and animal nutrition. We were again greeted with open arms and bountiful information that expanded and widened our horizons within the dairy industry. We focused a lot on dairy nutrition, toured the calf, heifer and milking cow facilities, learned about calf auto-feeders, heifer rations and transition cow supplements, to name a few. In addition, we were able to view other innovative research in the equine, beef and companion animal facilities. Not only is Purina dedicated to primitive research in the dairy industry, but throughout the agriculture industry as a whole.

As I reflect on our week together, I look back and am forever grateful for the people I met and the knowledge I gained. To have a company like Purina invest so much into a group of students who are the future of the dairy industry is reassuring and motivating in the fact that the Purina team members really do care about what we are doing as students at UW-Madison and about the future of an industry they have all dedicated their career to.

As a class at UW-Madison, we want to extend a huge thank you to the team at Land O’ Lakes Purina who took time out of their busy schedules to spend an entire week with us and to truly become mentors to all of us.

UW student Jordan Ebert also shared insight from the farm visit experience:

Having the opportunity to conduct a farm audit of the United Dreams Dairy and then present our findings to the farm’s owners and families was a great practical and applied learning experience, one of the best that I’ve had thus far in my time at UW-Madison. United Dreams Dairy was gracious enough to allow us onto their operation, where Purina professionals helped us analyze the dairy, looking more in depth at calves, nutrition, transition cows, lactating cows and business planning.

We then gathered as a group and discussed what we thought the dairy was doing very well and also where there were opportunities for improvement, along with how that improvement could be accomplished. We were then able to present our positives and opportunities to the Lehman and Evert families. This experience put us in a real-life consultant type role, where I felt as if I was truly making a difference, along with building confidence while presenting to producers.

It was extremely beneficial to my professional development and an opportunity that I would encourage anyone to take advantage of. A huge thank you goes out to the Lehman and Evert families and the United Dreams Dairy team, along with Purina and its representatives, for this extremely educational experience.  PD

Micheala Slind is a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, majoring in dairy science with a certificate in ag business. She plans to pursue a career in herd management or nutrition.

PHOTO 1: Tim and Lisa Evert from United Dreams Dairy hosted a group of UW-Madison students, who spent a day on their farm learning how to conduct audits and evaluations with the guidance of Purina staff. The Everts are partners of the dairy in North Freedom, Wisconsin, with Rick and Ronda Lehman (not pictured). Photo by Peggy Coffeen.

PHOTO 2: The five-day experience included a trip to Purina's research facilities in St. Louis, Missouri, as part of a one-credit course designed to introduce students to the opportunities in dairy cattle nutrition.

PHOTO 3: Purina representative Gary Geisler educated the students about dairy animal nutrition. Photos by Micheala Slind.