Ruminate This | Agrarian Solutions

62: Why Culture Builds Better Calves

Scott Zehr Season 2 Episode 62

Everyone talks about “culture” on dairies, but for calves, culture quietly determines which calves grow into healthy, high-performing cows and which struggle.

In this episode, Scott explores how Agrarian Solutions’ RISE core values, Relational, Integrity, Strategic, and Excellence, shape real-world calf management, not just posters in the office.

Through examples from three dairy farms, Scott demonstrates why the same facilities, nutrition, and SOPs can produce drastically different results:

  • Farm A: Two shifts, same protocols, with wildly different outcomes because attention to calves matters.
  • Farm B: Intentional hiring and team alignment drives uniform, resilient dairy calves that more than double birth weight.
  • Farm C: No new equipment or formulas. They focused on people, and calf health problems disappeared.

Explore how to apply RISE on your dairy farm by seeing quiet signals, sticking to protocols, and refusing mediocrity. Plus, learn why pre-weaning growth predicts lifetime milk production and how excellence spreads through dairy farm culture.

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