337 | Leading the Legacy from 100 Miles Away: A Modern Dairy Story
On the Uplevel Dairy Podcast, Peggy Coffeen visits Cooper Legacy Dairy near Clovis, New Mexico, a 2,000-cow operation run by fifth-generation dairyman Jered Cooper that also raises replacements and farms about 2,500 acres. Cooper shares how his family’s dairy roots span Michigan, Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico, and why he now lives about 80–100 miles away in the Lubbock, Texas area while still managing the dairy through internet-connected tools and support from his son on site.
He explains adopting Nedap smart tags and sort gates, which proved pivotal during a bird flu outbreak by enabling early health alerts, treatment monitoring, and improved herd outcomes, and now streamline daily workflows for health and reproduction via reports, mobile entry, and cloud syncing. Cooper also discusses passing the business to the sixth generation and writing a book inspired by his father about family, football, faith, and farming.
This episode is part of the High-Performance Mindset Series powered by Nedap.
Nedap is future-proofing dairy farming with smart technologies in activity monitoring, cow locating, milk metering, sort gates, and AI-powered camera systems. Nedap is improving life on the farm by putting the right cow in the right place at the right time, every time.
01:24 Meet Jered and the Dairy
02:06 Five Generation Roots
02:42 How Clovis Happened
05:29 Living 100 Miles Away
08:03 Tech That Makes It Work
08:40 Smart Tags and Bird Flu
12:32 New Workflow and Sort Gates
15:27 Health Score and Cow Insights
16:54 Next Gen and AI Future
18:25 Redefining the Modern Dairyman
20:24 Why It's Called Legacy
21:20 Milkman Love Note
22:35 Michigan Dairy Traditions
23:19 Depression Era Detour
23:59 One Cow to 2000
24:30 Family Farms and Pride
26:20 Next Gen Takes Over
30:42 Raising Kids on Dairy
32:19 Writing the Dairy Book
39:43 Legacy and Advice
