Putting milk quality first

BRILLION, Wis. — In March, Shiloh Dairy achieved a hard-earned goal many years in the making. After redirecting their focus back on milk quality, the dairy received an award from Grande Cheese Company for achieving a somatic cell count under 100,000.
Getting to this point was not happenstance. The turnaround resulted from a strategic effort led by Shiloh Dairy’s parlor manager, Danielle Ware-Dreier. It took a restructuring of the team and a commitment to ensuring protocols were followed faithfully.
“We worked hard to get here,” Ware-Dreier said. “It’s taken a lot of sweat and tears. It has not been easy.”
Shiloh Dairy was established in 2003 by Gordon and Cathy Speirs, who emigrated from Alberta, Canada.
“We wanted to get out of the dairy quota system and provide more of a free-market business opportunity,” Gordon said.
Their son, Travis, is the fourth generation and an owner and manager alongside his father. His mother, who managed calves and genetics, retired five years ago.
A series of expansions brought the Speirs family to their current herd size, milking 2,900 cows. Cows are milked three times a day in a double-36 parallel parlor. Currently, the SCC is at 59,000, and cows are averaging 112 pounds of energy-corrected milk per day.
“We always paid attention to milk quality, but as we grew and roles shifted and changed, instead of our focus being narrower, our focus got wider,” Travis said.
Throughout the growth, milk quality experienced setbacks. Changes in bedding posed part of the challenge.
“We changed how we managed recycled sand and got into dry fiber recycled bedding, which was a huge learning curve for everyone,” Travis said. “Managing the parlor on that bedding is a whole different game. That’s where Danielle came in.”
Returning the focus to milk quality and to doing the right thing when no one was looking were Ware-Dreier’s primary goals.
“My passion is milk quality,” she said. “I love the parlor. If I could sleep in there, I probably would.”
Getting rid of problematic cows was not the answer to lowering SCC. Rather, correcting cows was the mission.
“It’s easy to go in and say, ‘We’re going to ship the highest somatic cell cows,” Ware-Dreier said. “We didn’t do that. We didn’t cull to get here; we earned it.”
Building the right team was imperative.
“It took a solid six months to one year to get the right employees in the parlor as well as the right vendors,” Ware-Dreier said. “We had to get everyone doing the same things 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and weed out the people who aren’t going to listen.”
Numerous teaching moments took place as the managers at Shiloh Dairy continually demonstrated the correct way to do things in the parlor.
“Even the declaration of saying that we’re returning to those polices takes a Danielle to be in the parlor at every minute of the day to check and correct and check and correct until it is beaten into the routine that this is how we do it,” Gordon said.
Increasing the morale of her team and building them up as people was equally important as learning the work itself, Ware-Dreier said.
“I put just as much emphasis on them learning the routine as them being a good person,” she said. “We feel if they’re good people, they’re going to be good team members, and then in return, they’re going to treat the cows good.”
Shiloh Dairy has 53 employees, with 27 on the milking crew. There are six people per shift, including four milkers, a cow mover and a supervisor.
From the number of cows prepped to how cows are prepped, Danielle said they made many changes protocol-wise in the parlor. For example, they removed brushes in lieu of foaming and wiping with towels and added supervisors to each shift.
“It’s the little details,” she said. “I was trying to be in the parlor as much as I could and watch the camera, but it’s physically impossible. One person cannot be there 24 hours a day.”
Shiloh Dairy’s milking procedure is to pre-foam each teat, strip three squirts from each quarter, wipe each teat with a clean towel, flip the towel and clean each teat end, then attach the unit. After milking, a post dip is applied, providing complete coverage of each teat.
“The thing I keep reminding my team is to put the unit on a clean, dry, well-stimulated teat, but do you know how hard that is to accomplish?” Gordon said. “It’s every cow, every day, every time — the same way.”
Ware-Dreier believes in eliminating distractions in the parlor, therefore, there is no radio or cell phones allowed.
“Your focus is milking,” she said. “If you have earbuds in, how are you going to hear the cows squeaking, etc. We have high expectations (for our employees) and hold them accountable.”
High SCC cows are identified in the parlor. Cows exhibiting mastitis receive a California Mastitis Test, get banded, and moved to the hospital pen.
“We push hard on that, and our employees have done an amazing job on it,” Ware-Dreier said.
The dairy does on-farm culturing and treats based on those results. Within a lactation, cows can be treated up to three times for mastitis. If they are not better after three treatments, they are culled.
All chronic mastitis and high SCC cows are milked last and dipped with different cups. Repeat offenders wear an orange band, but the number of orange-banded cows is a fraction of what it once was. The dairy has also done a complete revamp of its dry cow protocol.
“It was all-hands-on-deck before,” Ware-Dreier said. “Now, there are only six of us who dry cows. It’s focused; there’s no talking.”
The dairy is using the same medicines to treat dry cows but has gone back to treating every cow versus certain cows. Also, the treatment protocol is followed to a T.
“There was a lot of drift on that before Danielle straightened it out,” Gordon said. “We’ve stopped making new (mastitis) cows over the dry period.”
In addition to fine-tuning the milking routine, the equipment function needed correcting as well.
“We went through the challenge of trying to find the right inflation for our cows,” Gordon said. “Danielle does a tremendous job on equipment maintenance and holds the dealership to account to get those jobs done.”
Deciding which teat dip to use, how much and how often, was another factor.
“We’re doing it differently than we did two years ago,” Gordon said. “Now, we use straight iodine but seem to have better results.”
Ware-Dreier is the herd, parlor, employee, maternity, calf and heifer manager, and her approach was holistic. Once the parlor was working as desired, she looked beyond it to address issues in other areas, such as how cows were getting milked in maternity.
“She systematically worked through the different departments of the farm and got each one ironed out,” Travis said.
Continuous tweaking has churned out the kind of results the managers at Shiloh Dairy were striving for.
“We are big on doing what’s right for the cow,” Ware-Dreier said. “We’re not perfect, and every day is a challenge. We do a lot of things good, but we’re always looking to improve.”