Our goal is simple: To reconnect the people working on dairy operations with their cows.

The daily management of a dairy operation requires the personnel to interact with the animals many times a day. Dairy stockmanship is the study of these interactions as well as the implementation of low-stress cow handling techniques to improve the outcomes for both the people and the cattle.

Mr. Bud Williams has been the leader in establishing many of the basic principles and practices of good cattle stockmanship and has been teaching these concepts to beef cattle audiences around the world for over thirty years. Many beef producers and their veterinarians are familiar with Bud and his concepts, but significantly fewer dairy operators have been exposed to Bud’s ideas.

The success of implementing these methods on beef cattle operations raises the possibilities of implementation on dairy operations. To further explore the potential, the authors attended a two day Bud William’s stockmanship school in Independence Kansas during April 2008. Our initial goal was to improve our personal stockmanship skills with dairy cattle.

During the course of these two days we gained a much clearer understanding of essential stockmanship skills and were able to improve our understanding of the behavior of dairy cattle. Most importantly however, Bud challenged us to look at the daily interactions between dairy cattle and people working with cattle differently. We realized that many of the core principles in good dairy stockmanship are being ignored on many dairies. We left Bud’s stockmanship school firmly committed to successfully implementing dairy stockmanship on a commercial dairy operation.

Emerald Dairy II is a transition management facility for two large commercial dairy operations located in Northwest Wisconsin. Dairy cattle housed at this facility include both mature cows and springing heifers from about six weeks prior to freshening to about two weeks after calving. Annually about 2,700 calvings are managed at the site. In addition, young calves are housed on the same site until 4 months of age.

The transition period is a critical time period for the dairy cow. This is also a time period for many critical interactions between the people and the cattle. Emerald Dairy II provided us with a number of opportunities to learn about, improve upon, and apply our stockmanship skills in a large, modern dairy operation.