363 | Go All In: Lessons from an Idaho Dairy Nutrition Consultant
Today on the Uplevel Dairy Podcast, Peggy Coffeen interviews Josh Peters of Standard Dairy Consultants about earning dairy producers’ trust without a dairy-farm background and why showing up and commitment matter. Peters shares his path from raising beef cattle, serving in the military, and working at Simplot to entering dairy nutrition, completing his bachelor’s and master’s degrees while feeding cows full time, and building long-term client relationships.
He discusses early success achieving seven pounds of components, emphasizing that results come from aligning genetics, feeds, infrastructure, and management rather than simple fixes. Since moving to Idaho’s Magic Valley, he’s seen rapid facility upgrades like cross-vent barns that reduce environmental variability but expose management and labor challenges, making consistency the key competitive advantage. Peters explains using Milc Group feeding software to improve speed, accuracy, and data-driven problem identification, focusing his consulting on bottlenecks and overall profitability, and argues AI won’t replace on-farm people willing to walk cows and do the daily work.
This Episode is Brought to you by the Milc Group
Milc Group is a dairy software company that brings real-time, actionable data to dairy farms across the world. They are dedicated to revolutionizing the dairy industry with their user-friendly cloud-based software. ONE™ by Milc Group is our all-in-one app that brings together all the important aspects of your dairy together in one place. With products such as feed and animal management software, people training, dairy facility monitoring, and scale management, Milc Group is committed to providing producers with tools they need to succeed.
01:18 Show Up And Commit
02:29 Beef Roots To Dairy
03:56 Military Mindset
04:48 All In On Education
06:53 First Herd Breakthrough
10:22 Magic Valley Shift
15:38 Consistency Over Rations
17:49 Tech And Data Tools
19:28 Milk Group In Action
22:41 Profitability Metrics
25:52 Labor And Hidden Leaks
33:08 Peeling The Onion
36:28 AI Cant Replace People
38:34 Future Of Dairy
