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In this episode of Cow-Side Conversations, Steve Harnish of Central Manor Dairy LLC in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania describes how they address bottlenecks on their 200-cow dairy operation, navigate land price constraints, and leverage certain pieces of technology to manage their cows more intensively. From upgrading their transition cow facility and installing cow ID technology to investing in rumination boluses and benchmarking through DRMS data, Steve says not everything happened at once. But with patience and time, these upgrades have given them more data at their fingertips to be proactive with herd health and boost milk production. Steve also shares his leadership journey and what he learned along the way after serving on multiple boards and participating in advocacy efforts across the dairy industry.

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In this episode of Cow-Side Conversations, we welcome our first-ever dairy producer from outside of Pennsylvania. Dee Shafer of Shafdon Farms in Jefferson, Maryland describes her family’s 10-year journey of trying to turn things around financially – moving from a place of being financially strapped with lenders telling them to look for someone else to becoming financially strong and profitable. Some of their most significant adjustments involved bringing in a Profit Team, revamping their cropping strategy, increasing their herd size to maximize their facilities and boost production, and always remembering their faith. Since 2017, they have added about 200 cows to their herd, lowered their breakeven cost by close to $3 per hundredweight, and officially hit over 30,000 pounds of milk per day for their now 400-cow herd. While Dee says they still don’t have it all figured out, she shares the little things they focus on to save time, boost cash flow, reduce equipment costs, tighten their breeding strategies, and lower their breakeven cost.

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In this episode of Cow-Side Conversations, Jennifer Metzler of Pleasant View Farms in Blair County, Pennsylvania opens up about an unexpected parlor fire and describes the aftermath – and recovery – for their 3,700-cow herd. Jennifer describes the on-the-spot decisions her family had to make and how humbled they were by the way their community showed up to support them. A total of 13 farms across Blair, Bedford and Huntingdon Counties took their cows in, and thanks to their community, they had all of their cows moved out to these different farms by 10:30am that morning, only a couple hours after the fire started. Jennifer also reflects on new opportunities that came from the fire, steps they’ve taken to prevent this type of emergency from happening again, and how a satellite dairy that’s four miles away from their home farm helped speed up the recovery process.