Volles Dairy Farm: “I committed to AHV, I believed in it, stuck with the program, and it worked”

Volles Dairy Farm has been operating for over 100 years and currently milks about 1600 cows, but being a fully sustainable farm, they have around 4000 cows including their upcoming replacements. They also raise their own feed. They have been using AHV protocols for over a year.

Try Something New

Danielle Volles says that the AHV Farm Advisor “caught her on a day” when she was frustrated with udder health issues and the traditional methods just not working anymore. She says she “was going to give AHV a 2-3 month try, but in the second month, we had stopped using any traditional methods for udder health. It just worked that well. We now use AHV Udder Health protocols on 100% of our cows.”

Trust the Farm Advisor & Employee Happiness

Volles says that her farm advisor is truly a help for her farm. She shares that he helped get her employees trained in the protocols, and that it is “much simpler” to use AHV protocols than traditional methods. She also says that “my employees care about the animals. When we started using AHV and seeing the udder health cows turn around relatively quickly, that makes everyone happy.” Before, she says that usually cows didn’t make it out of the infirmary, but now there is hope for her employees, who care about the cows.

Multiple AHV protocols

Since the success of the Udder Health protocols, Volles Farm is now using other products such as Metri for Uterine Health concerns. Volles says that they “see a lot less retained placentas” and they try to use AHV products to help the cows after a hard birth.

Saving Money

With a previous career in finance, Volles is especially concerned with the bottom line of her farm operation. She mentions that “financially I think we are saving money. Traditional methods are becoming more regulated and scarce. With AHV, we are proactively supporting the whole animal and preventing bigger issues. My main goal was to cut our cull rate. We are having months now where we aren’t losing any animals. AHV is working so well that our cull rate was cut to almost nothing.” She says this is a major financial win, because she prefers to not have to spend money on replacements, and to keep cows for more lactations.

Saving Cows

On top of financial benefits from AHV, Volles is happy to report “when our infirmary is almost empty and we see the cull rate get smaller and smaller, I know we are doing the right thing with AHV. I set some aggressive goals to push and see what the capabilities were of the products. In a short time frame, I knew we were doing the right thing.” Danielle says “I treat the cows like I would treat one of my own children. The way we’re caring for the animal is a direct reflection of the paycheck, but it’s hard to cull one. We have our oldest cow here on her 13th lactation. It starts with calf health and goes through. We have to treat them with the best products available. I committed to AHV, I believed in it, stuck with the program, and it worked.”