Nathan Kiefer

“Because of my long-time connection to farming, I am passionate about helping farms become more efficient and successful.”

I grew up on a farm in southern Indiana; my grandfather owned it, and then he passed it down to my father. So, farming has always been just a way of life. However, I never liked milking! It’s such monotonous work—I knew very early on that I had to find a different niche because milking certainly wasn’t for me. Becoming a dairy nutritionist, then, seemed like a natural progression. 

Because of my long-time connection to farming, I am passionate about helping farms become more efficient and successful. My familiarity and affinity for the farming lifestyle motivates me daily to help farmers not just to survive, but to thrive. My primary motivation is simply to help people in whatever ways I am able. If I can help a farmer to get his herd to produce more milk, to make herd reproduction more efficient, to maximize herd health, to turn any areas of weakness into areas of strength—that to me is success. That’s how I help people to the best of my ability. 

At BK Dairy Consulting, we pride ourselves on our out-of-the-box thinking. There is an entrepreneurial spirit that is prevalent here. We are willing and eager to experiment with cutting-edge research and to implement new methods that may be different from other dairy nutritionists. Systematic farm walkthroughs; extensive training; thorough TMR audits; evaluations of feed center efficiencies—whatever is necessary to maximize the efficiency of our farms, we will do it. Recently we brought on board a multilingual trainer as yet another step in separating BK Dairy Consulting from other consulting companies, and that move has already paid dividends by allowing us to pick up a few large dairies as a result of this approach. Much of the workforce on large farms is comprised of multilingual employees, and now we are able to effectively communicate our recommended methods for feeding, milking, and all our best practices and procedures to a diverse group of workers. 

Overall, our key area of expertise is in lowering feed cost and improving performance across the board in all aspects of the dairy farm. Reducing cost per cow and increasing ECM, all while improving overall feed efficiency to drive profitability--these are the main focus areas when we assess how to maximize the efficiency of our farms. The life of a dairy farmer is challenging, as I know from first-hand experience. That’s why we’re so committed to helping every single one of our farms achieve greater success than they’ve ever experienced before.