Uplevel Dairy Podcast

Karen Bohnert, editor of Dairy Herd Management and Milk Business, joins host Peggy Coffeen to celebrate dairy farm moms in this bonus Mother’s Day episode. Hear the incredible stories of the dairy farm moms who raised them, and the adversities they overcame to be examples of strength, sacrifice and resilience. And hear about some of the dairy farm moms who have set the bar for Peggy and Karen toda...

As we come up on Mother’s Day this weekend, I’ve asked Sarah Daugherty from Paramount Calves back to talk about being a mother of 6, and balancing a high-performing work life and a high-performing family life.  From performance pressure to kids’ sports to setting priorities and saying no, any mom or dad who pursues excellence both at work and at home will relate and can grab a few nuggets of wisdo...

If you are spending way too much time on hiring new employees, training and retraining, only to keep experiencing the exhaustion of turnover, this episode is for you. And my guest today is a higher performer in deed: Sarah Daugherty, workforce development manager at Paramount Calves LLC, in Darlington, Wis. Sarah is going to tell you how she has saved herself the time and stress of constantly trai...

Meet Young Leader Ytsje Andringa, a driven woman whose path seems to always lead her back to the driver’s seat of a silage truck. Ytsje shares how she shifted her career course from health care to follow her heart back to her family dairy farm, Sunrise Dairy in Clear Lake, South Dakota. She’s the daughter of Dutch immigrants, oldest of 6 and a mother to 3. This Young Leader will blow you away with...

If data has turned into the time-consuming monster that is stealing your focus, delaying decisions and dragging down your progress, you will want to keep listening because I’ve got something important that could change the game for you on this episode of the Uplevel Dairy Podcast. Our guest understands these challenges because he was a dairy manager himself in Texas for well over a decade, who fac...

“How good can we get?”  ​ That’s a question high-performers ask themselves and the teams they lead every single day. It’s also a question Megan Schrupp, DVM, at NexGen Dairy in Eden Valley, Minnesota, uses to push the potential for cows, people and her dairy farming business. This 20-minute episode is the hot take from one of our most popular podcasts of all time, Episode #36: Full Potential Dairy...

Meet the 28-year-old from Belgium who has embarked on a hands-on dairy farming journey around the globe.... Laurens Rutten challenged himself to dive into dairy on three continents, starting on a commercial grass-based dairy in New Zealand, then the world’s largest robotic dairy in Chile, and we catch up with him today on the third leg of his journey at Sunnyside Farms in New York. Laurens reveals...

As the US milk supply tightens, what opportunities and challenges are ahead for Class 3 and 4, as domestic demand lowers and exports pick up? Corn planters are starting to roll across the countryside, how might the early planting predictions impact your feed cost? That’s what we are covering today with Curtis Bosma in the HighGround Dairy Monthly Market Insights.  Find out how the markets are movi...

Over the past 6 months or so, I’ve sat down with some pretty incredible people in the dairy industry. The owners and managers of excellent dairies and some of the most sought-after consultants who specialize in employee performance, training, and retention.  Many of these are conversations you’ve heard on the UPlevel Dairy Podcast, and you can certainly go back and listen to them all, but if you r...

On this Uplevel Dairy Young Leaders Podcast, I’m turning the mic over to a trio of up-and-comers in dairy industry communications to interview three Dairy Challenge alumni who shared their experiences on a panel at the Midwest Dairy Challenge held in Green Bay, Wis., in February. Social media interns interview Dairy Challenge alumni: Nichole Gerard, Iowa State University student, interviews Crysta...

It wasn’t just their dairy farm on the line. It was their house too.  Pauly Paul from Complete Management Consulting is back to tell us how he helped one dairy family on the verge of losing it all turn around from bleeding red to a positive cash flow in 6 months.  Not only were they able to keep the farm and the house, but today, it is a financially sound business in the process of  transitioning...

No alcohol, 2-a-day workouts, following a diet, daily personal development reading and drinking a gallon of water … every day for 75 days. That’s 75 Hard, a transformative commitment for building mental toughness and self discipline, and these two Michigan dairymen just completed it, alongside the 4x4x48 endurance challenge from Episode 100.  Tommy Oesch from Swisslane Farms and Clare Alderink fro...

Last year, Michigan dairyman Tommy Oesch from Swisslane Farms, told us right here on the Uplevel Dairy Podcast that he planned to complete David Goggins’ extreme 4x4x48 endurance challenge: That’s running 4 miles, every 4 hours for 48 hours. Today, Tommy is back and he brought his friend Clare Alderink, general manager at Ryzebol Dairy, to talk about the grueling physical and mental challenge they...

Welcome to central Texas, where summer days exceed 100 degrees and heat stress is one of the greatest threats to cow health, reproduction and performance.  But since adding monitoring technology to their 1,250-cow herd last year, dairyman Hidde Osinga from Overwhere Dairy is using collar-collected data to: Find and treat compromised cows sooner Catch silent heats  Capture 15 percentage points on c...

We catch up with Curtis Bosma, vice president of producer services for HighGround Dairy, to hear about: Soybeans: All-time high crush capacity and largest carry in more than 15 years Managed money short covering corn and beans Domestic cheese demand slips while butter takes off Why are Texas dairy cows under the weather? Learn more and find market resources at https://highgrounddairy.com/ This epi...

In the final episode in this series with the women who are leading the way at Pagel Family Businesses, in Kewaunee, Wisconsin, we sit down with Ashley Pagel, human resources manager. Find out: Ashley’s transition from a career in health care to heading up human resources  How she has professionalized processes and paperwork Improving employee retention Compeer Financial is a member-owned Farm Cred...

We continue this 3-part series with the women who are leading the way at Pagel Family Businesses, in Kewaunee, Wisconsin.  Today, Chase Pagel debuts her new children’s book, Rosco’s Sweet Treats, a story that not only depicts modern dairy farming, but also a real-life tale of a steer raised by her daughter that had a taste for cupcakes and other treats. Chase talks about: How the challenge to find...

This week, we bring you a 3-part series, as we celebrate the month of March: the month of women’s history, international women’s day, as well as National Agriculture Day. What better way to do this than in Kewaunee, Wisconsin, at Pagel’s Ponderosa Dairy, with three very special guests from Pagel Family Businesses … three women who have risen to the challenge to be leaders … here at the dairy, in t...

In this episode of the UpLevel Dairy Podcast, host Peggy Coffeen welcomes back guest Leland Kootstra, an accountant well-versed in the dairy farming business sector and founding partner of Frazer, LLP. The dialogue offers a trove of wisdom for generational dairy farmers, focusing on the skills needed to take over the helm and steer their family businesses to new horizons. Leland emphasizes the imp...

In this episode of the UpLevel Dairy podcast, host Peggy Coffeen interviews Leland Kootstra, an accountant with Frazer, LLP, about the importance of succession planning in multi-generational dairy businesses. Kootstra shares three critical questions he asks both the senior and incoming generations to help them define their goals, timelines, and long-term outlook. He emphasizes the need for open an...

Hans Nederend isn’t only committed to producing high-quality milk on his dairies. He’s also committed to living a high-quality life. Whether it’s leading his family or leading his team, hear how Hans keeps his faith at the center of his roles as both a dad and a dairyman. In his responses to the “Uplevel 5,” Hans talks about: The book that changed his life and his leadership The Calvin Coolidge qu...

What does it take to maintain milk quality at a level of less than 75,000 SCC on 9,000 cows for 15 consecutive years? You might be surprised. We are catching up with Hans Nederend III from Nederend Dairies in Marsing, Idaho, who shared his secrets to milk quality success at the 2024 National Mastitis Council Annual Meeting. A past National Dairy Quality Award winner, Hans talks about: ✅ Consisten...

In this episode, Peggy sits down with a seventh-generation dairy family, Rob and Erica Diepersloot, from Madera, California, as they share their story of co-founding bovine colostrum company, WonderCow, including: The heartbreak they experienced as parents of a daughter with chronic ear infections, and how that led them to look in their own backyard to create a dairy-derived solution.  How inconsi...

She manages 15 employees, 1,200 baby calves and 700 maternity cows … and she’s just 24 years old. Our Uplevel Dairy Young Leader today is Madison Busse, Calf and Maternity Manager for Minnesota-based United Dairies.  The Ohio native didn’t grow up on a dairy but learned to love it, and while her path was originally to become a large animal veterinarian, an internship with a calf raiser prompted a...

Today’s big question: With heifer inventories at historic lows and global milk production trending lower in 2024, we seem to be poised for better milk prices compared to 2023, so what's your action plan to capitalize on this opportunity? If this question has you thinking, you’ve come to the right place, because Curtis Bosma is joining us for the HighGround Dairy Monthly Market Update. In this...