Nick Uglow Lake Mills, Wisconsin Dairy Specialist Vita Plus

Please describe your agricultural background.
I grew up on a registered Brown Swiss and Holstein farm in Watertown, Wis. I milk cows every day and own a variety of animals in my parents’ herd. I also have experience fitting dairy cattle for shows and sales and I am still very active in these events.

What education are you bringing with you to this position?
I graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 2000 with Bachelor of Science degrees in dairy science and agricultural journalism.

What territory will you cover?
Southern Wisconsin

What are your new responsibilities?
I will provide ration balancing, nutrition consulting and management expertise to livestock producers throughout the area and work with technical staff to offer customized solutions to meet customers’ production goals.

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What previous positions have you held?
I worked as an account executive for an agricultural marketing firm and have been a dairy feed and sales consultant for the past five years with another company.

What excites you most about working in your new role?
I’m excited to be a part of the Vita Plus team and utilize the vast resources available to help current and future customers.

How will you be of most help to producers in your region or area of expertise?
Since I devote my downtime to my parents’ operation and work directly with cows every day, I believe I bring hands-on experience and credibility to my position. This job isn’t always about pushing an optimize button on a ration balancer. It’s about finding what works best (or doesn’t work) for management strategies, dairy records analysis, marketing risks, etc. on each farm.

What’s your best story from the first day on the job?
After setting up e-mail on my cell phone, I received five or six “mass emails” from other Vita Plus consultants in the field, discussing what steps they were taking to address high feed prices. After reading all of these, I realized I was in a good place where everyone has a common goal to proactively help dairy producers.

Why did you choose this company?
Vita Plus has always been well established in our area and its culture and Values are two things that really attracted me to be an employee owner.

What goals would you like to accomplish while in this position?
I look to sharpen my skills as a consultant and use everything in my toolbox to help the dairy producers I work with search and adapt to new technologies and proactively grow within the new normal of the dairy industry. PD