I had the pleasure of attending the 2025 Operations Managers conference entitled "Empowering Managers: Embracing Diversity, Consistency, and Attitude for Success" hosted by Cornell PRO-DAIRY and Northeast Dairy Producers Association at the end of January. There were many great sessions in both English and Spanish. For those of you who were unable to make it, I wanted to share some of my favorite takeaways from the conference.

Leading Through Chaos - Erik Therwanger, Think GREAT

As anyone who has worked on a farm can attest to, there are usually seasons of chaos. Erik Therwanger shared his insights on how farmers can best lead through the chaos. He shared 5 key objectives to focus on amid chaos: be the beacon of positivity, promote forward-thinking, create a sense of urgency, increase accountability, and celebrate accomplishments. He emphasized that great leaders go into the challenge, stay true to their vision, and foster a lifestyle of leadership.

The importance of data quantity, quality, and consistency for effective dairy herd management - Dr. Julio Giordano, Cornell University

Dr. Giordano stressed that without data it is a lot more difficult to properly manage your herd. To get the maximum benefit for your farm, it is important that you also understand the data that you are collecting. Quantity matters, the more observations in your data set the better conclusions you can draw regarding your herd. Quality of data also matters; you need to ensure that there are clear definitions regarding the data collected that is easily standardized across all personnel. Quantity and quality are great but without consistency they are rendered useless. If you consistently collect mastitis data for 3 months but then slack off on reporting cases after that you may wrongly assume that you had a drop in mastitis cases when in reality you had a drop in your consistency of data collection.

Right people, right place, right tech - Jessica Pralle-Trimner, Miltrim Farms

Jessica Pralle-Trimner, originally from the same farm as Selz-Pralle Aftershock, is co-owner of Miltrim Farms, Wisconsin's largest robotic milking facility. They milk about 3,000 cows between their robotic facility and parlor facility. The transition to milk 1,800 of those cows on Lely robots was not easy and came with its own challenges. She left farmers with 5 things to remember in your day-to-day operations: listen to the cows, consistency is KEY, challenge the technology, find the right people, and you set the tone.

Changing the game on teaching strategies for effective cattle handling - Dr. Jennifer Van Os, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Probably one of my favorite takeaways from this conference was shared by Dr. Van Os. Her research group released an app called "Mooving Cows" which is available in the Apple and Android app stores. The goal with this app was to create an educational training resource that is compliant with the FARM program which educates farm workers on best practices when moving cattle. I had the opportunity to play the game, and it does a great job at teaching cattle flight zones and emphasizing positive handling actions.

Logo for the Mooving Cows Training App

In summary, the Operations Manager conference was an invaluable time of professional development and networking with farmers and industry specialists. This conference occurs once every two years and I highly recommend attendance for farmers and farm workers looking to take the next step on their path to becoming a great leader on their farm.