Have you ever heard the adage, “It takes money to make money”? Dairy farmers can especially appreciate that returns rarely come without an investment of time, energy, or money. Occasionally, it takes all three. However, recent research results suggest that even a small investment in employee training will result in returns for your dairy.

Michigan State University assistant professor Zelmar Rodriguez worked with dairy farms in Michigan and Ohio to train parlor employees and measure the impact of the training in terms of learning, changes in parlor performance, and at the farm level through productivity and health parameters.

“It’s incredible the difference among employees and their learning process. The gap is huge,” described Rodriguez on the “Dairy Science Digest” podcast. “The average tenure of trainees across the study was nine months. We can’t expect employees to come in with this knowledge.”

Furthermore, study participants were 82% male and 74% Spanish-speaking. This suggests the possible need for multiple sessions divided by language. Remarkably, the milking staff’s 49.3% score on the pre-training assessment revealed a gap in understanding. Depending on your farm’s knowledge gap, it might be fruitful to divide training by base level of knowledge, although that was not done for this project.

Training topics

The process began with a parlor pre-assessment. This included data collection of bulk tank somatic cell count (SCC), clinical mastitis rates, and employee performance. Employee measurements were collected using DeLaval’s Parlor Analysis and Simulation Service (PASS) tool. This allowed the researchers to customize the training for relevance at each farm.

During the pre-assessment, researchers captured photographs of the chore being completed. This helped participants visualize their farm and, specifically, the parlor, to better relate to the concepts and understand how to apply them.

Rodriguez used the National Mastitis Council’s free resources available online to draft a curriculum focused around the identification of and risk factors for mastitis as well as proper milking procedures.

While there is so much you can talk about around milking, these topics distilled down the most important details to train milking staff. Some of the key points further expanded on were what organisms cause mastitis and the ways employees can prevent the disease through proper procedures.

Rodriguez served as a third-party trainer, allowing the employees to learn from someone other than the farm owner or manager. While this model is not required, it often helps to have several voices saying the cohesive content of best management practices. Consider reaching out to your state’s Extension professionals, parlor maintenance crew, or milk co-op as possibilities to provide low or no-cost third-party training services for your staff.

Lessons learned

The employees reported enjoying the training, Rodriguez shared. They welcomed a forum to get answers to questions that had loomed without the proper opportunity to ask. It may take a little time or a few jokes for participants to warm up, he noted, but then they begin to recognize the safe learning environment and engage.

Confusion around how to handle abnormal milk was one question that bubbled to the surface on every farm enrolled. “It is critical that owners or parlor management are present at the training to answer questions just like these that are a bit subjective and vary from farm to farm,” encouraged Rodriguez.

Changes measured from the training included:

• Improved milker understanding, reflected by the 20-point improvement on the assessment
• Nearly immediate halt of bulk tank SCC increase following the training
• A spike in clinical mastitis identifications
• Providing proper lag time (between 60 seconds and 120 seconds) improved 20%
• Average reduction of milking time of 43 seconds per cow, with no change in employee performance

“It wasn’t as easy to get study participants as I thought it would be,” Rodriguez admitted. “They all would say, ‘We just don’t have time.’” Owners were encouraged to learn the training would only take about one hour. With all the measured improvements this training brought to the farm, perhaps the new adage should be, “It takes time, to make time.”

To hear more about this project or other current dairy research, listen in monthly to “Dairy Science Digest” on your favorite podcast platform. These research findings were summarized in a peer-reviewed open access article in the Journal of Dairy Science found at www.journalofdairyscience.org.