Hammerand earns Ralph Keeling Leadership Award

AMES, Iowa — This past fall, Jeff Hammerand walked to his mailbox to pick up his daily mail. That day it included a wedding invitation from one of the many people he has impacted in the dairy industry.

It is this impact he has had on others across four decades that prompted his receipt of the 2025 Ralph Keeling Leadership Award.

“I’m honored to have won this award,” Hammerand said. “My wife, Tammy, and my daughter, Jessie, and I don’t do this kind of stuff to win awards, but it’s nice to have somebody appreciate what you’ve done.”

The Ralph Keeling Leadership Award is presented annually to an Iowan who has shown outstanding leadership in the state’s dairy industry. Hammerand is a former dairy farmer who is currently employed at Redcarpet Holsteins in Illinois. He has coached dairy judging and quiz bowl in Dubuque County to give back and inspire the next generation.

“When we started, we’d get invited to graduation parties of kids we coached,” Hammerand said. “That makes me feel like I was important to them. Since then, it’s continued to college graduations, and now to wedding invitations and birth announcements.”

Hammerand has also served in a variety of leadership positions throughout his dairy career. He is the current co-chair of the Iowa Junior Holstein Association, alongside his wife. He has also sat on the board for the Iowa dairy princess program, worked with Northeast Iowa Community College in Calmar to help build the new dairy barn, and represented Iowa dairy at an NFL Fuel Up to Play 60 event at Kinnick Stadium.

Hammerand is one of several from his area to win the award and seeing his name alongside those who have inspired him makes the honor even more special.

“The list of people who have won this award in the past, people that I’ve definitely looked up to, is tremendous,” Hammerand said. “To have my name up there with people like Tom Simon, Joe Simon, Marvin Schlitzer, it’s an honor. They’ve all done great things for dairy and Dubuque County. It’s humbling to share this award with them.”

Through his coaching, Hammerand has found a way to repay his community, helping provide a service that was once afforded to him. He also hopes to inspire youth to continue to pursue their passion for dairy, while developing lifelong friendships and skills.

“I started coaching because I wanted to give back,” Hammerand said. “I had somebody who coached me when I was a sophomore or freshman in high school. It was a Dubuque County guy, Steve Kunde, who stepped up and coached us. It gave us the opportunity to do some stuff I hadn’t done before.”

Coaching provides more than just a chance to educate youth about dairy and the industry. It also gives Hammerand a chance to create lasting relationships among his teams.

“What I like seeing is kids I have coached on a team together becoming lifelong friends,” Hammerand said. “They hang out together, go places with their families together. I love to be competitive and I enjoy winning, but seeing kids become friends and hang out together, that is what really motivates me.”

In addition to helping form friendships, Hammerand has used his practices to help educate youth beyond the scope of dairy judging or quiz bowl. He strives to teach lifelong skills that his students can carry with them throughout their lives.

“We’ve had kids come back and tell us that some of what they’re learning in school is stuff we’ve already taught them,” Hammerand said. “We teach reproduction, nutrition, what a cow eats as compared to humans; there’s a little bit of everything.”

In addition to the general biology, Hammerand’s teams have worked on the skills of presenting opinions and standing by them through the reasoning process of dairy judging.

“No one likes giving reasons, especially when they’re younger,” Hammerand said. “But what we hope to teach the kid is how to communicate and stand by their decisions.”

Those skills help not just in dairy judging, but through the rest of their lives, no matter what field they go into, he said.

Although this year’s award bears Jeff’s name, it is the team at home that has helped Hammerand impact so many. He creates his coaching schedule around farming and depends on reliable help. That help has come from Tammy, whom Hammerand credits for his longevity as a coach.

“We do this as a family; the award should have all their names on it,” Hammerand said. “I’ve always said that every award I receive should have Tammy’s name on it, too. She’s just as big a part of this as I am.”

Their daughter, Jessie Hammerand, and her husband, Keegan Morris-Keiffer, help with  coaching duties as well.

“Jessie really started helping as soon as she graduated from the Iowa Junior Holstein Association,” Hammerand said. “She and Keegan were helping wrangle kids and get food for them as part of the Iowa junior show earlier this month.”

Dairying has been a part of their family for generations, as Hammerand and Tammy first started milking their own cows at Hammerand’s father’s farm in 1988. In 1995, the couple moved to Lancaster, Wisconsin, with hopes of becoming part of a larger dairy.

“They were scheduled to build a 400-cow dairy, and they asked us to come up and manage it,” Hammerand said. “We were there for eight months, and during that time, my brother would bring the kids up so I could coach them for dairy judging. They never did build the dairy, and we moved back to Bankston in Dubuque County to run our own dairy.”

After running their own farm for 10 years, a barn fire led to consolidation with his family farm.

“My dad and brother were willing to take us in,” Hammerand said. “For 20 years, we drove the 15 miles and milked at the home farm. We raised our calves and youngstock at our place in Bankston.”

Hammerand continued to work on the genetics of cows, gaining experience with in vitro fertilization, flushing and embryo sales. It was that experience that led him to a new career across state lines.

“Redcarpet is a robotic dairy that does a lot of IVF flushes,” Hammerand said. “That’s kind of my specialty, and Tammy takes care of all the calves we get from the IVF flushes.”

After a lifetime in Dubuque County, and a few months in Wisconsin, Hammerand took a job in Illinois but still hopes to impact Iowans interested in dairy and dairy judging.

“I haven’t figured out what we’re going to do next year yet,” Hammerand said. “Zoom is an option, so we’ll have to figure out how and if we can stay involved with it.”