Make no mistake, dairy farming is a challenging business. And for next-generation farmers, the challenge of taking over the family business can be overwhelming.

Laura Raatz, Paul Lippert and Nathan Wiese have big plans for one day taking over their family dairy operations, each with different challenges and goals. But running profitable businesses and striking the proper work-life balance are things they each have in common.

“We feel it is important to have an attitude of gratitude,” Raatz said during a meeting of the National Young Cooperators Program at World Dairy Expo. That “attitude of gratitude,” she said, comes across in the way her farm deals with people, the 950 cows they raise and taking care of the environment.

The farm’s motto is simple: People. Animals. Environment.

Raatz is the fifth generation on Wagner Farms in Oconto Falls, Wis. She farms with her parents, brother and husband, and is the herd manager focusing on animal health and comfort.

The farm has 950 cows, and the family grows 1,500 acres of crops.

She said that in 10 years, she hopes to be farming with her brother and husband, “but I think one of the biggest things we always try to focus on is making sure we’re trying to continually push profitability but also finding new ways to be profitable,” Raatz said. “And new ways more so, not just focusing on size or expansion, or how we can be the biggest dairy farm, but how we can do our job better with what we have now.”

When she came back to the farm in 2012, raising calves became her passion. She had a goal of bringing back the farm’s heifers, something a custom raiser had been doing for the past 31 years. Based on financial data and other data collected, she and her family eventually brought the heifers home.

Over the next three years, she hopes to expand the farm and possibly build a new barn, but a cap on the farm’s production base from their cooperative, Land O’Lakes, is holding them back.

“In order to get more base you have to purchase it, and that’s not the best thing for our farm right now,” Raatz said. “We’re going to be doing what we do best and making sure we make the best of what we have now, and hopefully, eventually, in the future be able to do that.”

Cow comfort and health are big focuses. She and her family recently purchased a Cow Manager system to keep better track of animal health and reproduction.

The farm’s positive-pressure hybrid barn is designed with cow comfort in mind. They do herd housing and have an advanced calf-feeding program. Growth rates have been good, and the farm is averaging less than a half-percent loss on calves, which Raatz said has helped ramp up the heifer program.

On the environment, the farm is part of a water quality group, which she said has helped them find different ways to take care of their land and invest in time and practices to make sure they do it well.

Raatz also leads the farm’s outreach efforts, on social media and through newsletters.

One of her goals is to have a neighborhood party for the local community with a farm tour and meal to show what the farms does and how it affects everyone around them.

The farm tracks more than 40 financial benchmarks, including 25 benchmarks that are tracked and graphed each month — such as reproduction, animal health and others.

“We set those benchmarks and use those charts to see how we’re doing as a dairy, where are some areas of opportunity that we can improve,” Raatz said. “If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

In Pittsville, Wis., Paul Lippert owns and operates Grass Ridge Farm LLC, a 600-head Holstein and Jersey dairy with his family.

Lippert runs the day-to-day operations that include employee management, herd health and agronomy.

Having a good work-life balance is important to him. He recently ran a half-marathon and is hoping to do a big ski race this winter.

“It’s trying to prove to myself that we can run a profitable dairy farm, but we can also do other things, like take care of ourselves,” Lippert said.

When his parents decided to milk more cows in 2000, expanding from 40 head to 300 head, then gradually expanding after that, the transition became difficult.

“They thought they were going to milk more cows and life was going to be better,” Lippert said. “It didn’t turn out that way. And I saw my parents go through that, and I saw them go through that with their business partners we don’t have anymore. Some rough patches for sure.”

Raising good animals is another farm pillar.

“We are cow people; genetics are important,” Lippert said.

The farm has been doing genomic testing for 10 years, but Lippert admits that they didn’t know how to make it profitable at first. Now that the farm is selling a lot of 2-year-olds, he said they are finally seeing the results of their investments.

“We really believe in that, and that’s why I believe our 2-year-old market is so good because people believe in it and keep coming back,” he said.

Heifers are raised on-site and rotationally grazed. They are also fed cranberry byproducts from neighboring bogs. “If it was consistent, it would be great cow feed, but it’s not terribly consistent,” Lippert said.

But nothing on the farm would operate right, he said, without good employees.

“We are cow people and people people,” Lippert said. “You can’t be good cow people if your people aren’t passionate about what they’re doing.”

Lippert said that he likes to empower his 15 full-time and four part-time employees to do a good job and to feel that they have skin in the game. He said this has helped build a positive culture.

“People mimic what they see and who they work with, and we spent a long time building a strong culture,” Lippert said. “And they know that even if we’re having a bad day or a stressful situation or something like that, that we’re calm around the cattle and we treat them with the respect they deserve, and we really see that come through our employees. They never see anybody fly off the handle or become agitated or anything like that. We see that kind of culture propagating itself, and that’s something we’ll really proud of.”

The farm could expand to milking 1,000 head, but Lippert said he is focused on quality over quantity.

“We’re just really focused on doing things the right way before we do more of it,” he said. “I think we do want to milk a few more cows, maybe farm a little more land, but we need to get it right before we do more of it.”

Nathan Wiese is a third-generation farmer at Wiese Family Farms LLC in the Fox Valley in central Wisconsin. He manages 220 cows and 1,000 acres of cropland with his family and four employees.

He is married with three children, and he entered the business as a partner with his parents. The operation was first expanded to 120 cows. Then, in 2008, a double-six milking parlor was built, and the herd was expanded again to 220 cows.

“We’ve been improving ever since,” he said, adding that milk yields average between 90 and 95 pounds per head.

Like Lippert, striking a good work-life balance is crucial to Wiese. “My parents didn’t even go on a honeymoon until their 25th wedding anniversary, so employees for me are very important. I couldn’t get away without them,” he said.

Wiese said he makes a point to be in the milking room every day at 4 a.m.

“When they walk in they see me,” he said. “I think that’s important too because if they don’t see the boss, they’re like, what are we doing if they’re not here.”

Profitability and sustainability are other top priorities. The farm has had a Cow Manager system in place for seven years, and he thinks it is one of the best investments the farm has ever made.

“It took me probably a year and a half to convince my dad to spend the money, but it ends up saving a lot,” Wiese said. “I bet we probably paid for it in a year or two. It’s hard to believe how a little tag in a cow’s ear can read all that stuff. It’s amazing.”

Wiese said he would like to expand the operation, and possibly install a robot or two within the next three years, but it has always been put off because of milk prices and other things. A transition barn, though, is a priority.

“Bankers don’t like transition or calf barns because they say it doesn’t make money,” Wiese said. “But the big struggle is from dry-off to calving, and I think the transition barn would help.”

His long-term plan is tougher to answer. It really depends on whether his children want to farm or not.

“If they don’t, that’s their choice,” Wiese said. “You can’t force them to farm. I wish they would because it would mean the world to me, but if the farm ends, it ends. That’s life. My family is the most important thing to me,” he says.

Set your farm’s vision

Peggy Coffeen led the roundtable discussion at World Dairy Expo with Raatz, Lippert and Wiese.

Before the event, she had each farmer fill out a form as a way for them to organize their thoughts on a sheet of paper.

Having been inspired by the book, “Traction,” Coffeen said it is important for producers, especially young ones, to not only have a plan for the farm, but also to identify things they need to do to get their plan in place.

“Vision without traction is basically a hallucination, and traction without vision is basically spinning your wheels,” she said.

Coffeen, who is the founder of Uplevel Dairy and host of the Uplevel Dairy Podcast, said the Vision-Traction Organizer was developed from the Entrepreneurial Operating System.

Using the organizer, a producer can write down their “vision” for the farm, and also set short- and long-term goals. The “traction” part of the organizer allows a producer to identify “rocks” of the business, as well as “issues” that may hold them back.

“The vision-traction organizer concept puts strategy to your vision and the actions to get you moving forward faster, so that you’re not spinning your wheels and it is getting you closer to where you want to go,” Coffeen says.