Originally published in Hoard’s Dairyman
For Paul Mason of Mason’s Chrome View in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the little details add up to big dividends on his family’s 500-cow dairy operation. After coming back to the dairy in 2013 and managing the farm alongside his father, their culture has always been rooted in innovation.
“Our farm kind of started with my grandfather and his brother. From the get-go, they always wanted to be on the innovative side of things. Our culture has always been about trying to chase what was the latest and greatest as long as it fits our farm. So that tradition kind of continued with my dad and his brother,” Paul shared. “There were definitely growing pains along the way, but based on where we are now, I feel like we’re fairly well-positioned. We have a good culture of wanting to pursue the things that can keep us both sustainable and economically feasible.”
From unique ways they keep employees engaged with production goals and herd health priorities to regenerative cropping strategies and calf-raising protocols that have led to astounding gains, Paul reflects on the nuances and management decisions that are part of dairy farming – and how he finds balance between them all.
Creating systems that improve herd health and milk quality goals
With the way the dairy marketplace has evolved over the years, fat and protein levels have become one of the Masons’ primary focus areas.
“Being in a Class I market, volume obviously does matter. But given that it’s a component market and with the changes in over-order premiums over the past eight years, we’ve really shifted from just straight volume to measuring pounds of fat and protein shipped,” Paul explained. “Our goal is to hit eight pounds of fat and protein for a 12-month rolling average. Three of the last four months, we have cleared 8 pounds of components per cow per day, but we still have work to do to hit 8+ every month of the year.”
For herd health, Paul says they aim to achieve 100 somatic cell count or lower, but tend to average closer to the 125 range. As they manage these goals, they have worked with their employees and created systems that allow them to catch problems before they start and pay attention to the finer details. Some of these strategies include:
- Taking a big-picture approach. “There’s so many things that go into somatic cell count, so how do we develop systems that provide some buffer? We bed with sand, so we continue to look at our sand system to lower moisture in the sand and decrease that propensity for any type of bacteria to live and grow there. We continue to review milking procedures. It’s all about how we make those systems easier so there’s less potential for problems. That’s the big-picture approach we take.”
- Implementing a high voluntary cull rate. “We have a really high voluntary cull rate. We raise close to 550 youngstock, so we’re churning through a lot of heifers and calving in a lot of heifers. This gives us the opportunity to make sure we’re calving in the heifers that we want to begin with. Then, we’re able to really make sure the mature cows that are staying are ones that provide a lot of our production. If you can have a 90-pound, 5 percent fat two-year-old come in, we’re not going to keep a 110-pound, four percent fat third lactation cow. It allows us to really look at that production per stall.”
- Tweaking their calf raising to include group housing and acidified milk. “We went to group housing and acidified milk. Once we got the system under our belt, they hit tremendous daily gains and we saw decreased incidences of scours and other challenges. All of that translates down the road by not having those health challenges and being able to have that growth early on. That folds into a better transition when they come into the milking herd.”
- Tracking feed refusals. “My dad got feeding software early on to track simple things like weighing in every load of silage we harvest. We’ve done that for 30 years, but now, we weigh every single pound that goes to every single pen. We’re tracking all of that to make sure our rations are on point. Having all that dry matter intake data, and even setting up a little scale to weigh every pound of feed refusals, it gives us accurate data to manage. One of the biggest things you want to take care of is making sure your cows are eating right. It’s a very fundamental data point.”
Managing a values-driven team and creating buy-in
Focusing on the little details also affects the way Paul and his dad interact with employees. They work to create buy-in at every level, so their employees understand how the little decisions they make on a daily basis affect the entire dairy business.
“We have a phenomenal herd manager who is a quality, top-of-the-line person. Our herd wouldn’t be where it is without her here. She is someone who really aligns with our business’s goals, perspectives and values,” Paul said. “It’s important to have buy-in at every level, whether you’re just feeding calves a couple days a week, feeding the entire herd full-time, milking, or doing reproduction. The little things are important [so we try] to create that culture of understanding –educating every level of employee so they understand how the things that they do have major implications on the dairy as a whole.”
One day-to-day responsibility that has major implications is animal handling. Paul says they brought in an outside consultant to train employees and create buy-in for the protocols they have in place for working with cows.
“Just about every single employee is moving animals in some respect, even if it’s just the feeder that has to move them out of the way if they’re too close to the gates or the milkers bringing up cows. The consultant spent three days at the farm doing in-classroom teaching and then actually put them in pens to do exercises for a full day,” Paul shared. “He helped them understand those little nuanced things like how adrenaline works, how that impacts milk letdown, and if these animals are not showing physical signs of adrenaline, then they’re probably going to milk out better for you.”
These types of training opportunities have also helped Paul identify which employees are committed, feel like they belong, and match the farm’s values – and which ones might be dragging the team down.
“Our reward structure is more about identifying those employees who have bought into our culture and continue to advance it based upon what they value. Nine times out of ten, that’s a monetary system, because the reality is, that’s the reason most people come to work. But sometimes, the biggest reward you can do for your employees is removing a bad employee,” Paul added. “If they feel like they’re carrying the weight of a person who has not bought in, sometimes the biggest boosts in morale we’ve seen involve removing a person who is weighing the team down.”
Optimizing their acreage with new cropping strategies
With the Mason family tilling just over 700 acres, they have moved away from the classic rye and triticale due to some agronomic challenges, soil-borne diseases and yield drags they were experiencing. Over the past three years, they have tried four and five-way cover crop mixes with ryegrass and wheat. Paul says this has helped them crop with the future in mind and optimize the acreage that they do have.
“A lot of our cropping strategies are born out of our land scarcity, which I think you’ll be hard-pressed to find a dairy farmer in the Pennsylvania region who does not talk about having too few acres. It’s a very common plight,” Paul said. “So, how do we make sure the acres we’re farming today are not being farmed just for today, but we’re farming them with the 20 or 30-year horizon in mind?”
Now, they are focusing on zone sampling and upgrading their corn planter to ensure they can do variable rating and get seed placed in the right spot. Paul is passionate about soil health, refusing to assume that just because a road was put in one place that the dirt in between the roads is the same. When it comes to cropping, their goal is to keep their inputs the same but get a better return for that input.
“One of the things we have adopted in the past five to eight years is doing a lot of zone sampling. We’ve developed and mapped zones for all of our fields. Just like every cow is a little bit different, one corner of your field has very different soil than the other corner of your field,” Paul explained. “The first phase is to find those delineation lines in our fields so we can manage them appropriately. We do zone management and then we’ve filtered things like lime and calcium into our variable rate applications. We want to balance our soils from a ph and base saturation standpoint, then variable rate things like nitrogen and seed based on soil need and potential.”
Paul also focuses on ways he can better utilize nitrogen and make sure the corn plant is actually utilizing that nitrogen.
“We’re working on phasing in a new technology that will allow us to apply manure in season to better utilize that manure instead of putting it all on upfront when we’re not really sure the rate of volatilization, the rate of breakdown, or any of that. We want to put that manure on when the corn plant needs it, so the nitrogen isn’t volatilizing or turning into nitrous oxide and emitting. We want it to actually get utilized by the corn plant,” Paul added.
While Paul strives to find innovative solutions to address problems, fine-tune the daily details, and maximize their inputs and returns, his ultimate goal is to find a balance between being content but not satisfied.
“There’s always another protocol or practice that you can improve upon. Whether it’s how well we’re judging how much feed is left in the bunk or getting all the spoilage off the tops of the bunks, all those little things – and the implications of those individual decision points – add up. It’s in those daily decisions that we see opportunities to improve to the next level,” he explained. “I think about the dynamics between contentment and satisfaction. I want to be content with what we’re doing right now in the current moment, but not satisfied. I don’t want to do every single thing the exact same way next spring because I want to do better than I did this year. I try to find balance in paying attention to all these details while not getting burnt out by them.”