Success is often shaped by values, found through hardships and the stimulus for momentum. If we learn anything from our 2023 Milk Business Award winners, it’s there is no cookie-cutter formula to achieve success, although each winner illustrates tenacity, passion and the ability to work hard. While all three award winners have different journeys to the farm, not one of them backed away from what it took to help their operations go from good to great, as they leaned into technology, communication and sound management practices.
## Young Producer Winner
The 2023 Milk Business Young Producer award winner is a fifth-generation dairy farmer from Remington, Va. Ben Smith, owns and operates Cool Lawn, LLC., a 900-cow registered Holstein herd consisting of 17 employees, and 3,000 rented and owned acres. Smith also helps with his family’s ice cream business, Moo Thru.
With the goal to return to his family farm, Smith headed to Virginia Tech to continue his education and conducted summer internships in Pennsylvania, Georgia and South Dakota that equipped him to help advance his family’s dairy. Smith said two pieces of advice have stuck with him, “Don’t let school get in the way of your education, and the key to success is being extremely good at the things nobody else wants to do.”
In 2011, Smith returned to Cool Lawn Dairy and began managing their 150-cow grazing dairy. In 2015, with efficiency in mind, the family decided to consolidate their herds and build a new free-stall barn.
Ken Smith said his son, Ben, did a lot in his first year back, like expanding the heifer barn and switching to bulk products that helped save the dairy money.
Patrick Comyn, DVM with Virginia Herd Health Management Services, who nominated Smith for the award, said Ben was instrumental in the decision to install a collar-based herd monitoring system to assist with heat detection and rumination.
Comyn also shares that Smith has good communication with his staff and seeks employee consensus when planning the dairy’s future. Half of Cool Lawn’s employees have been employed at the farm for 10 to 20 years.
Tearful, Ken is beyond proud of his son’s ability to grow and evolve the family’s dairy heritage.
For Ben, who is now in the driver’s seat, his number one goal is to continue the legacy that generations before him worked so tirelessly at.
“Our philosophy is if you’re not growing, you’re going backward,” he says, noting that growth can come in a lot of different shapes and sizes.
The future of Cool Lawn is one of expansion and innovation, but Smith says he plans to take it one step at a time.
## Leader in Technology Winner
The 2023 Milk Business Leader in Technology award winner shares that incorporating technology into his role as a herd manager has been a game changer that has upped the overall efficiency at Wisconsin’s largest family-owned dairy.
Chris Szydel of Kewaunee, Wis., joined Pagel’s Ponderosa as a nighttime milking technician in 1995. A decade later, he was promoted to herd manager and now manages both the Pagel Ponderosa and Hilltop Farm dairies, overseeing three different parlors and 65 employees.
“We doubled in one year, making for a big learning curve. Essentially, everything that was running so smoothly daily for 1,000 cows had to be converted to a 3,000-cow dairy with a whole new site and setup and going from one parlor to two parlors,” he says. “It was a big transition with a big learning curve.”
Jeannie Bishop with Merck Animal Health, who nominated Szydel for the award, said Szydel has been an extreme innovator and implementer of technology.
Szydel led the efforts to reduce lock-up times to 4 -5 hours per week by installing Parlor Boss and SenseHub (formerly known as SCR) that work together in their rotary.
“All the tasks we need to take care of for the cows show up on the screen. The cows are being taken care of without disrupting them, it is a low-stress environment,” he says.
A true testament to legacy living on, Don Niles, DVM, head of dairy operations for the Pagel Family Business, says he still sees a little bit of John Pagel (the matriarch of the Pagel operation, who passed away in 2018) in the day-to-day operations of the dairy.
Szydel shares that John Pagel taught him to put the cows first.
“It’s all about providing the best care to the cows,” Szydel says.
Additional cost-effective technology that Szydel helped implement in the Pagel Family Business includes the Pulse NeedleFree System – a disposable needle-free injector – and Cattle-Care – a dairy management software that uses existing parlor cameras and artificial intelligence to generate automated protocol reports. Szydel shares both have proven a great return on investment, minimizing lock-up times and generating better consistencies of the protocols.
“Our dad and grandfather were very aggressive with using technology,” J.J. Pagel, CEO of Pagel Family Business, says, adding that Szydel has carried that legacy on by being ‘all in’ when it comes to researching and implementing technology in the operations.
Szydel shares that John told him, “When we focus on something, just do it right. Mistakes will happen but we must learn from them.”
## Employee Excellence Winner
The 2023 Milk Business Employee of Excellence award winner, Laurenio Vitorino, came to America as a 15-year-old boy with his family from Portugal. Starting as a relief milker, today he serves as the general manager of Countyline LLC in Hilmar, overseeing the day-to-day operations of the dairy unit as well as having the farming operations team report to him.
Vance Ahlem, owner of Countyline LLC, shares that Vitorino has been extremely humble in his successes while striving to learn more and make things better for cows and staff each step of the way.
“Having started at the bottom of the organization and working his way up has given him great insight into each and every job in the business while giving him the ability to understand what he is asking others to do,” Ahlem says.
Vitorino’s most recent leadership project at the dairy was overseeing the conversion of Countyline’s milking herd from conventional to robotic. In this role he worked closely with Lely North America and TDR Inc.; learning the recommended steps needed for training and starting robot operations.
Ahlem shares that if he didn’t have Vitorino’s buy-in, their family would never have switched to robots. After starting the first set of robots, Vitorino was able to streamline the process to reduce and eliminate the need for outside labor during start up as well as reworking some of the gating to provide a safer experience for both cows and staff.
“He put his heart and soul into this process and made every startup better,” Ahlem says. “When he thinks about startups, he thinks about how we can be easy on the cows.”
Vitorino is humbled to receive this award, but says it comes from teamwork. His advice to other farm managers is to lean on communication. He is thankful for the opportunities he has had to learn and succeed. One way he plans to help drive Countyline forward is by providing the same opportunities to his employees.
While success can come in many shapes and sizes, our three award winners illustrate that once a person finds their passion, they not only find their purpose, they also find success.
As we celebrate the accomplishments of these outstanding individuals in the dairy industry, let their stories inspire us to continue striving for excellence in everything we do. Each winner represents a different aspect of success, whether it be through innovation, hard work, or dedication to their craft. Let their achievements be a reminder that with passion and perseverance, anything is possible in the world of farming.
—
If you want to stay updated with more inspiring stories and valuable insights from the dairy industry, make sure to subscribe to Cattle Weekly’s Newsletter. Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts or questions in the comments section below. Let’s keep the conversation going!
