Over the last two years, I have worked full time on my family’s farm – Kulp Family Dairy LLC. During this time, I have aimed toward a major milestone and asked myself, am I ready and able to hold a position of ownership/leadership within our family business?
The answer? Absolutely! I feel incredibly blessed and fortunate to have lived, learned and grown up on a dairy farm, which I am now a part of leading. Stepping into a management role on a 3,000-milking-cow dairy, at 23 years old, can be a daunting task. I’m still learning every day, but I’d like to share three key lessons that have helped me feel prepared and excited for this next chapter.
1. Be curious
I’ve always been a curious person, which has helped me greatly since returning to the farm after finishing my college degree. After graduating, my main responsibility entailed taking care of the cows, which was new to me compared to other operations. It was a natural fit because I enjoy animals, but I had limited experience working with cows at the time – growing up, my siblings and I started out feeding and caring for calves, eventually moving to field work. Now, a curious nature was critical to helping me navigate this transition. I watched and worked closely with various employees, asked many questions and have since moved into the role of herd manager.
That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped asking questions, though. Like I said earlier, I realize that learning is a lifelong endeavor and mindset, and I have a great example to demonstrate that. We recently worked through a unique mastitis issue on our farm. As the summer months came to an end, we saw a somatic cell count (SCC) level we weren’t happy with. Despite making all the recommended changes, we weren’t seeing a drop in SCC. So, I set up an on-farm lab to culture our own milk samples to create a shorter turnaround time. This led to an interesting discovery – up to this point, our issues were ruled as environmental cases. However, a few weeks after setting up my lab, I found Streptococcus agalactiae. After confirming this with one of our testing companies, we were able to make more specific changes that have since made drastic improvements – after a month of hard work, our SCC dropped by more than 100,000. If it weren’t for that curiosity, I’d still be “spinning in circles,” as some would say.
2. Find mentors
I’ve been blessed with some great mentors while training to be a good herd manager at our dairy farm. Sticking with the mastitis example, I worked closely with our dairy management consultant, Nate Heim from Next Level ROI LLC, when I started to sense the severity of the case. He helped me to look at the situation in a nonconventional way and was encouraging when I made the decision to set up my own testing lab on the farm.
Having someone like Nate, who has unique experience working with different dairy farms, along with our vet, nutritionist and other vendors, is a tremendous asset when learning and growing in your role. That’s who I believe make the best partners and mentors – those who are supportive and bring a perspective you wouldn’t get on your own. There is always a new skill or trick you can learn in the process.
3. Use your strengths
My siblings and I each have our own unique interests, abilities and strengths, which not only produce much joy and purpose when utilized, but have even helped us on our professional career journeys. As for me, my strengths are: listening, learning, optimism and trying new things on our family dairy farm. I’m ready to use my strengths, along with my organizational and detail-oriented skillsets, to optimize my leadership role as herd manager. I know I can help provide a better environment for our cows and a better experience for our employees.
I’m honored to play a role in helping our family and our business take on the next generation of success.
