Jim Halama

Attention to detail brings profitability

“Little things don’t mean a lot, they mean everything.”

It’s one of the favorite sayings of MBA certified consultant Bob Schmidtknecht.

It’s also the philosophy of the Halama family farm near Independence, Wisconsin, which is one of Bob’s customers.

The 855-acre operation raises all its own feeds for the dairy herd plus the dairy steers. The stock they raise with a fine attention to management details reaps the many benefits of healthy, productive and profitable livestock.

Before starting on the BioAg program, the local veterinarian made a lot of trips to the farm. “Cows weren’t cleaning and we had DAs,” Jim Halama recalls. Vet bills ranged as high as $5,000. The hoof trimmer was on-site often, too, but now stops by only once a year, and foot problems are rare.

They added kelp in the ration plus MBA’s Free Choice program with salt, kelp and minerals, along with high quality hay. “I noticed the cows calve more easily. We don’t pull nearly as many, and uterine infections are down to almost nothing. We haven’t worked on a DA for years now,” Jim notes. “Reproduction is good, too,” he added.

Jim Halama is a straight-forward guy. “If it’s good, I’ll tell you; if it’s not, I’ll tell you too. I wouldn’t be with [BioAg] if they weren’t doing me some good.”

Little things do mean a lot, and details are important to good management and good results.