Uplevel Dairy Podcast

What if there was just one question you could ask in the interview process to identify your next best, long-term employee? What if asking that one question not only helped you to fill an open spot today, but opened the door for that right person to stay with you for a decade, and who is bought into your vision and motivated to help achieve your goals and benchmarks for your business?  Elsie Gonzal...

If you are pulling your hair out because your milking parlor is constantly running behind schedule ... the 7-hour shift is stretching out to 9 hours, and the flow of feeding, cleaning stalls and everything else in the back of the barn is thrown off because you just can't seem to get all the groups milked on time? If that's you, you are not alone - this is one of the biggest frustrations on...

Empowering middle managers to be leaders, employee cell phone protocols and bringing team building to the dairies. That's what we are hitting up today on the Uplevel Dairy Podcast. Bridget Schilling from Schilling Farms in Darlington and Montfort, Wisconsin, is back on with us today. On Ep 53, she talked about getting a new team on board while taking on a second dairy, and today, we are tappin...

Our featured Uplevel Dairy Young Leader is Taylor Zeltwanger. He joins us from Morris, Minnesota, where he resides with his wife. This 2020 South Dakota State University graduate started working for his uncle’s company, NutraDrip, while in college, and 5 years later, has channeled his massive energy and passion into a career helping farmers capture the value of precision ag and sustainable farming...

Texas dairyman Nathan Moroney talked about using technology to make managing 8,000 cows at Del Rio Dairy easier and more efficient on Ep. 58, and today you are going to hear more from Nathan. His background story may surprise you.  Find out how this city boy from Pheonix found his way to the Texas Panhandle, where he dove in head first to learn the ropes of dairy management, and how he puts to wor...

One of the big challenges that comes up for dairy farm owners and managers as they grow and scale is this: Should you invest more heavily in highly-skilled, really good cow people, or invest in technology to do the things a good cow person could do?  What if there was a way to streamline your cow flow and work flow, that allowed those really good cow people to focus their time and attention only o...

What do gratitude and thanksgiving have to do with you and your drive to reach your next level of performance as a dairy producer or professional? Perhaps more than you think. Today I’m sharing how gratitude has become not just a habit for me, but a true performance hack. If you want to be more clear, calm and focused both at work and at home, you are going to learn 3 easy steps to get started. An...

The Uplevel Dairy Podcast is expanding to include a second bi-weekly podcast, the Uplevel Dairy Young Leaders Podcast! This is for producers and professionals in the first 5 years of their dairy careers. You can find new episodes dropping every other Thursday on Uplevel Dairy, or follow the Uplevel Dairy Young Leaders Podcast on your favorite platform. We're kicking off this very first episode...

Breaking the stronghold of alcohol, finding time for friends and getting honest with yourself… we’re going there today in the second part of this conversation with Tommy Oesch from Swiss Lane Farms. We’ve been talking with Tommy about his 5 “buckets” of priorities, and you heard about 3 of them in Ep. 54: Family - his role as a father and husband Faith - why his weekly men’s discipleship group is...

If you’ve got big goals and a big vision for your dairy and your business, you know that it takes incredible focus and hard work, but what you may also know is that if you get too focused on one thing – “one bucket” - all of that success can come at a cost … and the price you pay can be your family, your relationships … even your health.   So if finding a balance for your big goals and these “buck...

If buying or leasing a turn-key dairy at another location is part of your business strategy, this episode is for you.   The real question is this: How do you walk into an existing dairy and its culture, and recreate it to be what YOU need it to be, so that the new site and the new team are engaged and motivated to hit your benchmarks and goals?   Schilling Farms was a high-performing herd, milking...

I’ve got a special gift for you, Uplevel Dairy leaders! It is 10 minutes of straight talk on leadership and culture, directly from one of the greatest minds in the dairy business, Jim Ostrom, CEO, President and founding partner of Milk Source.    What has been his mindset over the past nearly 30 years, from starting with 3 partners and a few cows, to now running multiple high-performing dairies, b...

If you are a dairy producer who has been thinking about taking your milk all the way to the dairy case yourself, this episode is for you. Vertical integration is on the minds of many forward-thinking dairy farmers. And that's why today you are going to hear from a dairyman who is doing it on the Uplevel Dairy podcast. I recently sat down with TJ Tuls, a fourth-generation dairyman and founder o...

You may already be doing annual employee reviews … but are you actually using them to drive employee engagement?   And maybe you hold monthly employee meetings … but are they actually helping you to get buy-in and build team camaraderie to move toward your goals?   Or are you just checking the boxes with more meetings that take up your time and space on your calendar?   We’re revisiting highlights...

If you want to be successful and confident in the decisions you are making in the dairy business, there is one tool I want to share with you today that will help you move forward. It’s helped me in my business to gain more focus and clarity, it’s helped make decisions easier, it’s saved me time and money, and it can do that for you too. Join host, Peggy Coffeen, as she leads a panel discussion at...

Welcome to another "Best of Uplevel Dairy" feature! This week I sat down with Scott Blevins to dive into what it takes to have the mindset of a high-performing dairy manager. Dairy manager Scott Blevins shares the habits, routines, and principles that build his resilience and endurance to stay on top of his game while managing 6,500 cows, 6,600 youngstock, and a team of people at Wiese B...

Welcome to the Best of Uplevel Dairy Season 1! In this episode, I am chatting with Jared Dueppengiesser, herd manager of Milk Source's Rosendale Dairy, about his experience in building a top-notch employee culture that resulted in zero turnover! Jared Dueppengiesser has worked his way up through the Milk Source organization, from a herdsman to now manager of Rosendale Dairy. He leads a team of...

Today, we are talking about a 1,500-cow dairy that was on the verge of selling out - but not on their own terms. The farm had not made money in 3 years. Their banker told them their loan was not going to be up for renewal, and suggested the auction block was their action plan. And a good dairy farmer who was having a hard time hanging onto hope that things would ever get better - for his farm and...

What's happening halfway around the world in the global marketplace that can impact your milk check in this final quarter of 2023? ​​On today's episode, you are going to get the cliff notes on the trends in the export market along with domestic supply and consumption. So you can be informed and empowered to make the best decisions for your dairy. And here to share that with us is Mary Keou...

Culture. It’s how your employees feel in the pit of their stomach on Sunday night about coming in to work for you on Monday morning. On a recent visit to Shiloh Dairy in Brillion, Wisconsin, the winning culture was clear: There was a party in the parlor. Milkers were smiling and striking a pose for pictures. The employees were happy to be there, and having fun. So I just had to sit down with the o...

From co-founding a company that feeds more than 1.1 million cows all over the world with Progressive Dairy Solutions, to feeding people and providing a value-added marketing opportunity for dairy farm families through Valley Milk, and now leading efforts to help dairy farmers be beneficiaries of the methane market, Matt Budine has had a hand in seeing the vision for what it will take to be success...

Maybe it’s to get healthier. Maybe it’s to start a business. But you are stuck. You have not taken action on it because you “don’t have time” or you “don’t know where to start.” Well consider this the nudge you needed to start turning that little spark into a 5-alarm fire today. Dairy farmer Katy Schultz, Tri-Fecta Farms, Fox Lake, Wisconsin, tells the story of being the girl who faked “sick” on m...

What does it take to not only grow a dairy farm from 1,800 cows to 4,200 cows, and not just scale the operation, but scale the leadership team? To help current team members rise to new roles, and to retain all of those leaders in the process? That’s what you will be hearing about today from Steve Abel, of Abel Dairy Farms in Wisconsin, and along with one of his closest advisors who has walked alon...

How can a dairy rely less on skilled labor? Is it possible to even eliminate some positions? And to do so while actually improving cow care and milk quality, and not to mention your stress level as an owner or manager? We are going to one of the most notoriously challenging labor markets in the country to find out how one California dairyman is doing just that. Our guest today is Brandon Mendonsa,...

Have you been avoiding a conversation you know you need to have with an underperforming team member? Is their attitude impacting the rest of the team, yet you keep putting it off, hoping it will get better on its own? Kristy Pagel from Leading Edge Consulting LLC provides you with a take-home tool to tackle a tough conversation with confidence and a clear path to move forward. Download your FREE “...