Dairy farmers have plenty of people knocking on their door with the promise to deliver incredible results: vets, feed advisers, barn designers, fertility experts, material suppliers and many more. But of these, which one of them can actually help you add lactations to your cows’ productive life?

Who will take you from high rates of subclinical milk fever, laminitis and mastitis to barely any illness at all? Here are five characteristics that define a great farm adviser. The first characteristic is in your heart. The rest can be taught.

1. They have the best interest of the farmer and the cows at heart.

Great advisers focus on animal welfare as their first priority, not on how much money they can make from selling a product. Farmers deserve an adviser who challenges them and helps them improve, and that is well worth their investment. I can promise you the costs will be earned back in longevity, health and working pleasure:

• Every sick cow costs $330 on average … and a lot of trouble.
• Every lactation you lose needs to be compensated with new young stock. In 2015, the average cost for raising a heifer was $2,500, according to the University of Wisconsin Extension.
• Dairy cows produce more milk in later lactations and with a higher feed efficiency. Farmers miss this extra free production completely.

2. They understand cows.

To achieve excellent animal welfare and longevity, there’s one simple thing you need to do: Provide the cow with what she needs. If you give the cow her six basic needs, she will pay you back in health and milk. Those needs are feed, water, light, air, rest and space.

To know if cows are provided with these six basics, all you have to do is look at the cow signals. The cow will tell you herself what she needs because she knows best.

3. They understand elements outside their area of expertise.

Another challenge for advisers is to understand factors involved in animal welfare besides their own expertise. We value the knowledge of experts a lot, but the best advisers also have a general understanding of all elements: housing, feed, health, management and economics. It’s the only way you can truly help farmers understand the source of their problems and find the right solutions.

4. They have the ability to make things practical and simple.

Let me start by saying that I appreciate scientific knowledge a lot. However, to make this knowledge usable for farmers, you need to be able to translate it into practice. A good adviser visits a lot of farms to see what works and what doesn’t, and they want to make sure that the solution provided is one that the farmer is able to execute.

5. They understand people.

When I started out as a vet and an adviser, I soon learned that having excellent knowledge about cows is not enough. Even more so, it might have made me a little arrogant, and that for sure didn’t make farmers want to listen to me. I soon realized I not only needed to understand the cow signals, but also the people signals.

Advising is more about listening and asking the right questions than it is about telling people what to do. To truly help farmers, you have to look from the farmers’ point of view. That is the starting point from which you can effect real change. It’s all about understanding people and getting them to take action.  

Joep Driessen is the founder of CowSignals Training Company.