There are a lot of farmers in their 30s and 40s who don’t know what their future looks like.  The truth be told: 77% of farms don't have a succession plan. And this obviously has a lot to do with why only 12% of farms pass onto the third generation!

It recently came to my attention that employee retention is an issue in most businesses today, and we are an outlier in this area. Sourcing employees and employee retention is a common question we receive during tours and community presentations.

Most dairy farmers labor under a strict routine they feel comfortable with. This comfort reaches well beyond daily milking parlor tasks and affects cattle breeding programs, likely touching on some variations of heat detection, estrus synchronization, artificial insemination (A.I.) and potentially in vitro fertilization (IVF), followed by embryo transfer (ET).

I truly believe that it takes a special type of person to be a farmer, more specifically, a dairy farmer. Having the opportunity to farm with your significant other can be a huge blessing, but it takes a lot of creative ways of doing things together to make it work. 

Increasing feed costs. Weather. Mastitis. Working with family. Sick calves. Changing contracts. Paperwork. Bad silage. Your brother-in-law. The list of stressors on a dairy farm is long. Unfortunately, most of them are also chronic.