57: The True Cost of Staying the Same on Your Dairy

What if the biggest hidden cost on your dairy isn’t feed, labor, or genetics, but the pain of not changing?

In this episode of Ruminate This, Scott Zehr and co-host Jeff Hostetter, Product Manager at Premier Select Sires, explore the challenges and opportunities facing today’s dairy producers. Change in dairy management can feel disruptive with new training, updated protocols, and added investments. But staying the same carries a constant, quiet cost in lost milk production, reproductive failures, high culling rates, and wasted resources.

You’ll learn how forward-thinking farms push past “good enough” and capture more profit by:

• Supporting cow longevity and keeping “Golden Girls” in 4th and 5th lactation productive, the most profitable animals in the herd.
• Recognizing the true ceiling of herd performance and avoiding the trap of underestimating potential.
• Making smart, long-term investments in transition cow management, calf health, and silage protection that deliver a powerful ROI.
• Building trust with dairy nutritionists and consultants who prioritize the farm’s interests and make change easier.

Every dairy pays for pain. The choice is whether to take on the short-term discomfort of change for long-term herd health and profitability, or keep paying forever through hidden losses, high turnover, and missed opportunities. The pain of change is temporary. The pain of staying the same is permanent.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello everyone, welcome to Ruminate This with Agrade Solutions. Join us as we explore ruminant nutrition and the impact of mycotoxins. Here we challenge your curiosity and explore new industry insights and research to optimize your herd's health and performance. Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of Ruminate This with the Grand Solutions. I'm your host, Scott Zare, and today we're going to talk about pain. That's right, pain. The pain of change versus the pain of staying the same. Every farm I walk on to tells kind of the same story without ever saying a word. I can see it in the numbers. You often see it in the cows. And you can see it in the look on the manager's face. They know something's broken. Maybe it's fresh cow crashes. Maybe Repro is stuck in neutral. Maybe it's a ration that doesn't pencil out anymore, even though it looks great on paper. But here's the thing nobody wants to admit bad choices hurt. The difference is which pain are you willing to pay for? Are you willing to invest in pain or would you rather pay for pain? The pain of change is sharp, it's uncomfortable, and it's immediate. You have to retrain employees, rewrite protocols, and take a hard look at what you've been coasting on. It stings. But the pain is staying the same. That's the slow bleed. It's the milk you never ship. It's the cows that never breed back. It's the forage you never get to feed. And ultimately, the profits that never show up. It doesn't scream at you, it just robs you quietly. So today we're gonna break this down the pain of change versus the pain of staying the same. And why the smartest producers I know choose to suffer now so they can win later. This isn't theory, it's real life. So let's ruminate on this. And with that, today, my co-host for the day is none other than my friend Jeff Hostetter, who's going to ruminate on this topic with me. You know, Jeff, you and I get to work together quite a bit. Oftentimes, when we get pulled onto a farm, it's not because everything's going great. But oftentimes we're the ones that do embrace that role of being the agent of change. Jeff, you are the product manager for Premier Select Sawyers. You've been in sales now for I think you said 25-ish years. That's correct. You've had to in 25 years ran across a farm where they just couldn't change. The pain of staying the same was still not as great as the pain of change in their mind. And if you haven't, let me know. But if you have, the question I have for you is what happens to those folks that just can't fathom the pain of change.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Well, I think you were incorrect, Scott. You said I've run across a farm that wouldn't change. I've run across many, many, many farms that were definitely resistant to change. And it's human nature, the pain of what you know versus the pain of the unknown. And there's a certain amount of fear in that unknown. But, you know, as you say that question, I can think of a specific farm back in my previous work as a nutritional consultant, where really friendly, good relationship that I had with this dairy producer. And it was it was a relatively small farm, just a couple hundred cows in southern Pennsylvania. But I was not working with them at the time as far as doing their nutrition work, but I had stopped a few times and made a few management suggestions, and they were so I guess they were jaded by the fact that there had been people in there in the past that had made promises that were not kept. So they they'd almost become distrusting of folks that that stopped on the farm. But I did end up making a suggestion as far as water availability coming out of the parlor, and they did find a way to implement that and saw some positive change. And eventually I was able to work with them and had a good working relationship for several years after that. You know, I do think that each situation is different and people don't always know that they're in pain. They may not see the pain or feel the pain necessarily, or they may have just become callous to the pain and or they've tried to make a change in the past and they just it didn't work, or they were given bad advice, or someone was just you know trying to sell them something that wasn't gonna give them a return on in their investment.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

They were self-serving then rather than customer serving, right? Yes, and unfortunately there's still folks like that around. There is, and I I think you know, guys like ourselves, many people in the professional space that are serving you know, dairy and beef, we certainly pay for the sins of the past. And sometimes those sins are just people, right? People that are out there with their own agenda rather than the customers' agenda. I like what you said though, the fear of the unknown, right? And I and I think I think psychologically, I think that's a big part of people's resistance to change. But then like tactical, right? I mean, it it hurts. Like if we have to implement new protocols, now we have to retrain our employees. I mean, stuff like that leads to chaos. Very few times are we going to be able to just hey, here's the new protocol, here's how you implement it, and go, and there's never a hiccup. There's a learning curve, right? Because it has to become habit. And that's it's costly. There's no doubt about it. You know, think about things like adopting a new transition gal program. We're making changes, we're expecting people to carry out those changes, and what if they don't? Right? I wonder, I guess my hope is that we can challenge somebody listening to think of this pain as something you can either choose to invest in or something that's it's it's going to cost, right? I love that term, like the milk you didn't ship. Because Jeff, how many times have you walked onto a farm and how are the cows doing? Like, how's production? Oh, we're making 85, 88 pounds of milk. You know, they're satisfied with that. And you look at maybe the setup, the management potential, the feed quality, you know, stuff, and you know that there's contemporaries out there making 95 pounds of milk, 100 pounds of milk, making seven plus pounds of components. But yeah, this guy's satisfied at 85. And I think you can always have that discussion of you know cost of you know gaining that extra milk, but boy, why are we so complacent? It seems like. I mean, so so many farms. It's like, yeah, we we hit 88 pounds of milk, we've been there for three years. Why is good enough all of a sudden becoming good enough? And of course, I'm painting a broad brush, it's not the way it is on every farm, but those aren't the people I'm trying to reach right now.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Yeah, I think it's like complacency and people just don't know what their ceiling is for that particular operation. They just they don't know their ceiling. They think, you know, especially if they've made progress through the years, through the decades, and they see how far they've come, and they may kind of hit a, like you said, where they reach a certain plateau for two or three years and think, okay, this this must be the limiting spot of where this operation with these facilities and these genetics and these people, 85 pounds, let's just say, and they they might not know their ceiling, or they might not even understand what what's the weakest link. What is the weak link in their operation to just take them to the next level? And I think there's less folks that are complacent than there were five or 10 years ago because you know you you've got to keep pushing and being aggressive and looking for that next to reach that next level in this industry. It's just such a competitive industry, and it doesn't mean that you jump at every every product or every everything that becomes available. You do your research, you investigate, but the folks that are the most successful, I think, really don't believe in a ceiling. They believe that anything's possible, and they're willing to put the work in to make that happen and to and to see what tools they can utilize to make that happen.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Well, I remember back in my previous life with with Premier, I was on a dairy, one of the first breeding customers that I ever picked up. I said to the owner, I said, So what's what's your goals here? Like what's your production goal? What's your repro goal? You know, I'm I'm waiting for the numbers, right? I'm waiting for 95 pounds of milk, I'm waiting for 50% for service conception rate. And it was really funny. He he said, I don't believe in goals. It's like, okay, tell me more about this. He said, I think the problem with goals is that, okay, let's just say I set a goal of 100 pounds of milk. Well, if I can go from, you know, my dad in 1960 making 70 pounds of milk to 100 pounds of milk in you know, 2015, should that be my goal? Like, is that the right goal? Like, should that goal be 110 pounds of milk? He goes, Why would you put a limitation on how how high you can go? And so I I think that's an interesting point you just made. I I don't think a lot of farms truly understand their ceiling. Or maybe the right way of saying that is they think there's a ceiling that doesn't exist. Are we seeing that right now with reproduction success? I mean, this is kind of a side note here, but man, if I go back 10 years ago, Jeff, and you know, preaching 50% of your herd pregnant on first service is what I used to challenge clients to do. And now we're seeing 60. And I mean, if if we'd have kept the mindset that 50% is as good as you're ever gonna do, and nobody's willing to challenge it. I mean, what if what if we can get 90%? I think we've I've brought that up here before with Dr. Roth and John Lawler on an episode that we did together. I like what you said on not understanding their weakest link. You know, I mean it's a similar analogy, right? We've used this probably a million times in my life, but the guy that manages the dry cow program probably isn't going to be the first one that notices the cows are too fat or too thin, right? Too close to the situation. But then when somebody like yourself does have that opportunity to point out that weakest link and figuring out ways of doing that thing better, whatever that thing might be, sometimes they still don't want to recognize it, right? And you know, maybe some of it is fear of the unknown, like you said, but I heard this somewhere. Change stings because it shines a spotlight on the habits we'd rather not admit we need to break. Yeah. Ouch. Yeah, you know, and it just, you know, kind of makes you kind of makes you think about that in a different light. But you know, with change, right, there's this upfront hurt. We talked about it with retraining employees, we talked about it with establishing new protocols, and obviously sometimes there's an initial monetary investment, some capital. But let's let's flip the script and go the other way. So staying the same. Boy, there's a lot of hurt there that can last a long time. So, what are some Jeff's just some practical examples? Like staying the same on that mindset of staying the same hurts forever or hurts for longer, anyway. Give us some examples of things you've seen on herds over the years where just the status quo has become acceptable.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

Yeah, yeah. I think, and this is kind of fresh in my mind. Recently got to hear Dr. Gavin Staley with Diamond V talk about the Golden Girls, those cows, fourth, fifth lactation or more that they've paid for school. They paid their raising costs, and they're just very profitable. And I'm thinking of a herd that we did a one of our folks at Premier did a repro analysis, and they had a very high percentage of two-year-olds in the herd, first lactation. And they were good with it. They liked it that way. They had a very high call rate. I think it was upwards over 40%. But in their mind, they were bringing, you know, those new genetics constantly into the herd, and their milk was okay. It was it was low 90s, but they had gotten used to that. And they just had that mindset like an older cow is nothing but problems. And it was a whole mindset shift to just get them to consider, you know, if we make a change, if we do some things to maybe support those older cows through the transition, could we avoid some of those early, you know, first 60-day calls on those older cows and bring down that call rate a little bit? And therefore, you know, maybe we don't need to raise quite as many heifers. Maybe we could, you know, raise a few more beef on dairy and help cash flow, that kind of thing. So it was just part of it was like this the story that they were telling themselves, and we all do this, we tell ourselves stories in our own mind that you're doing something because you like it. But when you really dig down and figure out the economics behind it, the profitability behind it, there might be ways to do it better. We just have to encourage people that we work with to be open to look at those things. And I think part of our job as consultants or people that work with producers is to make it easier for them to make changes. Like, you know, they're everyone's busy. Producers are busy, they've got things on their mind. They may be thinking about future expansion, or you know, how do I how do I pay my bills? Or just they've got a lot on their mind. Can we facilitate a protocol change by, you know, typing up a protocol, translate it to Spanish if needed, like anything we can do to make their life or make a change less less painful up front? I think we need to make sure that we're doing our part as well.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Well, I think that's a great point. I like that you went there with the call rate deal because that's oh yeah, I think that's one of those things that you know. Obviously, we we see a shift across there in the US where we do want these golden girls, we want more of them. And I'm just gonna pick on you know that comment about they were excited to be bringing in all these new genetics.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

What is the point of bringing in all these new genetics if they're gonna be out of the herd in 2.1 lactations?

SPEAKER_01 16:57

I mean the other point is with that people in the past have used the 305 ME number, the 305 Me lactation number. You don't get paid for ME. It's easily melt in a tank.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

I think we've overemphasized that at times.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

I would agree. I I love it even more when people want to make breeding decisions on 305 ME. I think I love it. Anyway, that's not for this one, but you know, and I guess, you know, just trying to think about this pain, it's almost like pain management, right? But you know, if you're listening to this episode or you're you're listening to it and it's applicable, or you're listening to it and you think you're, you know, maybe you're a consultant, you have a farm in mind, you know, I'm I'm thinking about that herd that 15 non-completion is is what it is. We don't really treat a lot of DAs, but we do seem to have a lot of fresh cows that just don't take off all that fast. Right? It's it's these quiet things, and my favorite one, my favorite one now, Jeff, now that I'm more on the feed end of stuff with agrarian, is wasted feed. I really like the way Dr. Roth put it in an episode, I think it was our corn silage episode, putting up good corn silage, probably episode 52. Yes, episode 52. I had to check myself. But imagine imagine the corn pile being a pile of hundred dollar bills. Every time you take a bucket of feed out of there and go dump it in your in your compost pile, you're dumping money. But yet there's a lot of resistance, and again, it's not everybody, but I can I can drive four miles from my house to a multi-generational 2000 cow dairy that you know they've been around a long time, they've obviously done something right, but what are they having to do? Like, where else are they having to give up because they literally won't put plastic on their corn bunk? So, like, imagine the money you'd have left over if you just saved, you know, 10% of your corn, 15% of your corn. Any year like this year, at least crops around here, corn silage is going to be very valuable because we don't have right now, we do not have a lot of great corn silage out there. So, you know, this episode, if you're listening, is is airing in October. We're recording this middle of September right now, and corn shopping's going on, and Jeff, it looks rough out there. But the wasted feed thing, I think, is a big one that we probably need to look at. Because that and I think that's a good example of that that quiet robbing of profits that we just don't see, right? It's not a bill we have to pay. So, Jeff, when I say that I think smart producers choose which pain they pay for, what do you hear when I say that?

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Smart producer, they choose the pain. Yeah, they're proactive. They change before they're forced to, because they may look at uh a small problem. Let's say their somatic cell count's a little high, maybe it's 180, and they would like to see it less than that, and they're willing to they understand that that is even 180 is is costing them, whether it's premiums or lost milk or more mastitis incidents. But if they can figure out a way to lower that before there's a problem, before there's a huge uptick in mastitis through a heat wave, what's gonna help them? And they may have to spend some money, they may go through some pain, they may need to call some cows in the beginning, which is a cost they wouldn't have had, but in the long run, they're gonna be much, much further ahead financially and health-wise in their herd if they do something like that.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

Playing the long game, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's most most dairy producers aren't here to melt cows for two years and then sell the herd and jump back any. It might be a few, but yeah, we're we're in it for the long haul. We're in it for the long haul.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Yeah, it's it's interesting. You think about some of the decision making. That goes on. And some of the smartest producers I've ever been around, you know, when we're having these types of discussions, whether it's on cell count, whether it's on anything really, they it's it's almost like, and you can see it on their face, right? They're just kind of like thinking about this from a 10,000-foot view. Like, what does this decision today mean five years from now? What does it mean 10 years from now? Right. And it's not just making decisions to put out fires. And I think if I think if that's the position that you currently find yourself in as a producer, like email us podcast at agrsol.com and you know let's let's talk. Because that's not that's not a recipe for success. I mean, that's that's painful being in that mode when you're reactionary problem solving and gosh, it you know, seems like everything's going wrong, right? You're making these decisions, and hey, I'm gonna be the first one to tell you. I don't have a dairy farm, but I am in farming with maple. Guess what happened to me this weekend, Jeff? I'm I had a project that I needed to use my skid steer for, and my skid steer wouldn't start. Well, the starter was bad. Well, I knew that there's been a bad spot in the starter for a year and a half, but then when I needed the skid steer the most, the starter decided to just call it quits. That wasn't very strategic on my part, right? To make matters worse, okay, I'll just go use the tractor. And because I needed the loader. I bought a set of tires for that tractor three years ago for the front and said, hey, when because one they were both getting bad, but I mean, we're not using this tractor a ton, but it was on the agenda to get it done this year. So I I walk over to the bar and I jump on the tractor. Guess what? That tire gave out from the day before. Now the tractor's on three wheels. I have no skid steer, I have no tractor. Right? And so, yeah, the mindset behind that of you know, just it was stressful, just like, you know, oh poor me, everything went wrong the same time. To your point, that you know, guys that think 10 steps ahead, all that would have been avoided.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

And it happens to all of us, like it it definitely does, but it takes time to examine yourself or examine your operation and say, what are those things that are drip, drip, dripping away at my profits or my profitability? I've actually started asking folks on farm visits, you know, what's what is your greatest point of pain right now? And they'll usually say, Oh, it's labor or or milk prices too low, you know, just kind of off the top of the head. But I s I do encourage people like take some time and just think, take time with your account and look over what are those areas where you feel like there's opportunity, opportunity for growth. It doesn't always jump out and bite you. And sometimes you like like with the tires or the skid layer, you know it's there. You're just like it we'll get around to it. It's it works for now.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

But it takes time to to figure out those things.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Yeah, we talk a lot in especially here at Agrarian, right? Every company that sells a product, we talk about ROI. I I think from this this pain discussion, one of the things I want to I want to challenge listeners with, and I'd like your your take on this, Jeff, is what's the ROI of a few weeks of pain, or maybe even a couple months of pain, if it means better calvings, if it means better repro, if it means more milk, if it means happier people, which is gonna turn into stronger margins down the road. What's the ROI on that versus what you're doing now?

SPEAKER_01 26:33

Yeah, it's like looking behind the surface, for example, for calves, if you're we sell a product called Convert Gel, it's an antibody product that you give to every calf at birth, and there's a cost to that, depends what package, but you know, maybe seven or eight bucks a calf. And what's the return on that investment? There's the obvious, okay, if less calves die or get sick, that's where your money comes back. But there's there's so many hidden costs to that. There's the labor to treat calves, there is the lost gain, there is okay. We we all know if an if an animal, if a calf is sick a couple times while it's young, it's not going to produce as an adult. I mean, when you're talking ROI, I do think calves and and young heifers is there's a huge return on on investment. And it yeah, we we start with with what they're worth from the day they from the minute they hit the ground. They're more valuable than ever. Yeah, it's there are just so many hidden costs in that and that little bit of quote unquote pain of just boosting their immune system and and fortifying their health from day one, there's multiple streams of return, some we don't even realize.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Yeah, I think that's a great point. And along those same lines, I'll share this. One of the smartest things I ever heard a producer say about our DTX product. So think epigenetics, right? We've all seen, if you haven't, it's out there research showing that a pregnant cow through about a heat stress, quote unquote, I mean, which is basically inflammation. Like the cow is affected, the offspring's affected, that's in utero, and the developing gonads of that offspring are also affected. It's affecting three generations simultaneously. The same thing should carry over to a mycotoxin challenge, right? It's an event, an inflammation event that that's happening to that dry cow. And, you know, and when I encouraged the producer to include the dry cows on DTX to give them coverage from the high Don and high Zerolinone in that herd, immediately met with yes, that is a great idea because we need to be thinking about the cows that we want to milk three, five years down the road. Yeah. Like that's on their radar. Yeah. I thought that was a great, just a great perspective on that. Because yeah, I mean, how many herds do we run across that cows not making milk right now? Whether she's a you know prepubescent heifer, whether she's a bred heifer, if she's never calped or she's dry, they don't matter. They're not making milk right now. Yeah, you know, and and again, it can be painful to have to re you know retrain our brains to think about that stuff. But I I would challenge folks to to consider that. I mean, I come back to every farm is gonna pay for pain. Which pain would you rather pay for? The kind you pay once or the kind that just takes money away from you day after day, day after day. Jeff, as we wrap up, I'd like to give you a chance here, just what's a from your perspective, 25 years experience and in working with with dairy farms in a couple different ways. You know, what are two or three things that you really want to send home with the audience today?

SPEAKER_01 30:33

You know, I would just encourage producers to not be risk averse. In everything, everything you try, there's risk. Every change you make, there's risk, like we said before, fear of the unknown. But I would encourage producers to figure out who they trust, who's demonstrated, and earn that trust. And then when they trust those folks, don't be afraid to try things that could put a uh plug in those ongoing drips of pain and fix it permanently, like permanent fixes to to issues. We can't fix everything with a with a teaspoon of this or a product. There may be facility changes that are needed, and that may require creativity and that kind of thing. But I think just don't be afraid to to try things, see how they work on your operation. What's the worst thing that could happen? You know, you could spend a little bit of money on on something and it you didn't see the response on your herd, but it's not trying is it's like I just feel like you're shooting yourself in the foot by by not trying something just because it's things are pretty good. Things are pretty good. So that I think that's the biggest thing I've I've seen. Just finding people you trust, and then don't be afraid to to try things that that put yourself out there that have a little bit of cost, a time investment, you know, a resource investment, and trust those people that you work with to help you work through those things.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

Wow, I think that's great advice. And you know, from my perspective, I'll I guess kind of the same thing. Um I'll echo what Jeff said. And if you're listening to this episode, and I I don't know, like that this is something that I I really think an episode that I think people can can take to. Because that again, at the end of the day, every farm is going to pay for pain. And it really the only choice you have is which bill you're willing to pay. You can pay that sharp upfront cost of change, the discomfort of retraining, rewriting, and rethinking, or you can keep paying the slow invisible tax of staying the same. You know, going back to that the milk that never ships, the cows that never breed back, the feed we never feed. And you know, I I think the smart producers, uh Jeff, they don't avoid pain, right? They choose the pain that buys them a better future. The pain of change, folks, is temporary, but to Jeff's point, the the pain of staying the same is it can be permanent. So yeah, I would like to just challenge the listeners out there. If you're a consultant, if you're a producer, if you're a consultant, thinking about a producer. Now's the time. Now's the time. So, folks, I appreciate you tuning in to another episode of Ruminate This. Jeff, good to talk to you as always, buddy. And we'll be talking again soon. And everybody else, see you in two weeks. Thank you for listening to Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. Look for our next episode in two weeks.