This week we continue our “Meet the Team” series with National Farm Program Manage, Dan Hoying. Dan shares his journey, including his philosophy on proactive service and the critical role of trust in building long-term customer relationships.
Whether it’s troubleshooting on-farm issues or going the extra mile to ensure animal health, Dan embodies a servant leadership mentality that inspires both colleagues and customers. Tune in to hear his heartfelt stories, lessons learned, and why he believes working in agriculture is like no other industry.
If you found value in today’s podcast, please follow and share Ruminate This. If you would like to learn more, connect with us at [email protected]
🎧 Listen now to set your herd up for lifelong success!
Scott Zehr
All right. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. I’m your host, Scott Zehr. And today we continue our series, Meet the Team with Agrarian Solutions. And today, we have our national farm program manager, the one, the only, the man, the myth, the legend, as I call him, Dan Hoying from Ohio. Dan, how are you doing today?
Dan Hoying
I’m doing wonderful. Scott, you know, it’s amazing what happens to you when they put a microphone in front of your mouth. It’s amazing.
Scott Zehr
I don’t know if I should ask what that means or…
Dan Hoying
The gift of gab, you know, you, you got it more than I do. Like we were talking and…
Scott Zehr
That’s high praise, Dan, that’s high praise.
Dan Hoying
I know where we were cut from the same cloth, both grew up on a dairy learned how to breed cows and thought that that was our savior and our way out and realized, you know, that’s a young man’s game. And, needed to look at pursue other avenues and realize there was opportunities out there.
You saw opportunities with the microphone. I saw it with the front end of the cow and the calf and promoting the Agrarian products. And, it’s led to pretty good careers. You know, we both had opportunities growing up on a dairy to take over a dairy. And I did for several years.
Got married and raised two young girls, daughters. And realize I was burning the candle on both ends between refereeing, sports events, and coaching and trying to milk cows and farm and realize when you got in the other end of the day, kids were asleep.
And my wife was a registered nurse until she, till you got up in the morning, you’re already out in the barn taking care of cows. Cause you had a ton of work. You had to get done that day and you had to hurry up because you had a basketball or football game to take to referee when you were done or coach and.
Got to the point where, you know, throw in mother nature and throw in a drought year or throw in low milk price, which every dairyman’s understands that part. We’re willing to fuel our passion is a good way of putting it for taking care of dairy cows. And I think you and I were both very fortunate because we see that sometimes where dairymen step away and you know, every dairyman understands that passion for cows.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dan Hoying
You can’t replace that. You know, for me, when I was a technician, to me, that was still probably the most rewarding was as long as you were, the dairyman was around and you were around for that three years where you pick that mating on that cow, or you use that bull, you know, and then that offspring came into parlor and I could still remember the one gentleman, one producer’s wife who always took care of the calves.
And he would critique every bull you use. And finally I said, Bill, you can’t do that. I ain’t got enough time for that. You’re going to have to trust me. So I started using good quality bulls and seeing his cows and his wife came in like three years later and she goes, Oh my God. Cause she did all the milking.
She goes, I cannot believe the quality of our animals that are coming in here. You know, and, and I’m going to preface my age here. The bull that I made a lot of friends with was the bull called Emery, 7, 8, 30, 48. Back in the day, when it was still COBA, Bernie Heisner decided to do a 50 percent off because it was their 50 year anniversary.
And I still claim he was the instigator of all this 50 percent off baloney that is out there right now. He wanted to do a 50 percent off and his board threw a fit. We all threw a fit. We’re like, Oh my God, we’re going to lose all this money. At the most, you were back then you were 10, 20 percent off. We did 50%.
And I had a bunch of herds. They wanted to use nothing more than a $12 bull. And they got a really good deal on Emory. And Emory at that time was 30. So you could convince them, look, you’re going to save $15 if you use Emory at $30 versus using a 12, 24 bull and using him for $12.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dan Hoying
So they bought into that because they’re a bunch of bunch of tight wads. You know, the old model, if it’s free, I’ll take it for me.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. If it’s free, it’s for me.
Dan Hoying
That was their model.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dan Hoying
So I picked on Emory. Emery had holes in with butterfat. You talk about make a beautiful two year old that was big and strong. And he was noted for being spotted cows. And man, did they come in and set the world on fire and they milled. And in that case, you made a lot of friends.
And in the case of a bill, when he turned that greeting over to me, you know, my integrity was on the line. And you had to put your, trust in some of these bulls, you know, some of them. And we know some of the breeder proven never turned out.
Scott Zehr
Well, you, you make, you make an important point there because I think we all go through that at some point in our professional career. And really just in life in general, right? To where, when you’re getting to know somebody, and maybe it’s a client relationship, maybe it’s, in my case, trying to convince my now wife to, date me, that kind of stuff.
You have to sell yourself in some way. And sometimes it does come down to like, Hey, you got to give up a little bit of control a little bit, right? You have to trust something that’s maybe out of your control in order to, what’s the term I’m looking for? Yeah, the proof is in the pudding as they say, right?
So similarly Dan and this is dating my age a little bit, but one of the bulls that I used in that manner and when I did it, there was, it was 50 percent off was like the starting point, up here in New York, fighting Gen X. But I talked to the guy that did a lot of matings for me and I’m like, just give me three bulls that we can rely on.
And he said, mogul, super sire, McCutcheon. Breed cows to those bulls, recommend them, you’re probably not going to go too wrong. And he said, let me take care of the mating side of it, and we’ll protect super sire’s feet and legs. And, you know, we’ll protect the front ends on the mogul. And the McCutcheons use them on every poor udder bull you have, or poor uddered cow you have. And wow, did we make a lot of happy customers up here
Dan Hoying
Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Zehr
And then a little bit after that came along a bull that, I mean, I couldn’t tell you how many Yoder daughters are floating around up here that we bred still today, but…
Dan Hoying
But look how long it took you, it took you that generation to build that trust with that customer.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. I mean, if I look back at 2013, when I got into the AI industryy it was July, basically July one of 2013. I didn’t pick up my first customer until October and I never started breeding more than like five or six cows a day for another year after that.
Dan Hoying
Right. But look how important, look how important it was for you. Same for me, when you go to a new customer, how they look at you? Initially you’re a salesman. “Oh my God, how fast can I get rid of him?
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dan Hoying
And how fast can I hide from him the next time he shows up? And what am I going to tell him?” Or is it going to be a sympathy buy? Where I’m going to buy something and have him go away.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dan Hoying
Versus, I’m here, what can I do for you? And in some cases, this ties in with what we’re doing now with agrarian in our products is what can I help you with problems you’re having on the farm?
Scott Zehr
You know, they tomorrow, five years from now.
Dan Hoying
In my case, I was limited on the amount of cows I could bring because I had a defined area when I started as a technician. And I always tell this story when my biggest customer was a 400 cow dairy, who went bankrupt about a month after I started breeding cows. And when the guy previous to me got fired at the end, he was breeding about 2000 cows. Well, if we do the math on 400 cows at three services, that’s 1200. That was half of my breedings. Poof. Went away.
Scott Zehr
It was like that.
Dan Hoying
I looked at my wife, I said, I’m going to need a part time job to get for my part time job and then milk cows for us to survive.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dan Hoying
And literally that’s what it amounted to. So what I started doing, my biggest competitor was the four legged kind. So I’m driving by all these farms and we had a lot of small dairies, which is a different world today.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dan Hoying
That’s a whole nother discussion, but what can I do to these farms to improve my bottom line, but also help with the possibility of getting a foot in the door to maybe breeding their cows? And that was the products.
Scott Zehr
And started Agrarian with the non semen…
Dan Hoying
Exactly. And it started working. And like I always tell people, the only thing that travels faster than a good name is a bad name.
Scott Zehr
Exactly.
Dan Hoying
You know, and when you’re at the farm and I know one of the things we talk about is your appearance. And coming in with your vehicle clean and your boots clean that you’re not, you know, looking like a slob with a bunch of crap. Yeah. We all been there. You’re going to have those days where you get sprayed from a cow wiping out in front of you or taken off, whatever.
But, And the other part is finding out what that customer needs. What is his priority?
Scott Zehr
Yep.
Dan Hoying
No, that old cliche. And we talk about this, Scott is, you know, listen to understand. Don’t listen to respond.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. And well, there was, I think it was Chad Christianson, our colleague, Chad, I did a conversation with him the other day in this series, meet the team. And there’s a reason we have two ears and one mouth, right? We listen twice as much as we talk. And that could have been Nick Bradley that said it, I don’t remember which, but either way. Which is exactly what you’re saying.
And Dan, I wanted you’ve kind of answered a lot of this already. Without me even asking the question. So which, which actually speaks to how easy it is to interview and talk to Dan Hoying, but…
Dan Hoying
You just gave an opportunity for everybody listening to this to say, all right, that’s enough. But…
Scott Zehr
But you know, if I were to ask the question this way, Dan, and who is Dan Hoying?
Dan Hoying
Boy. Very shy, bashful dairyman, who,
Scott Zehr
Sarcastic.
Dan Hoying
Who just wants to, who gets really gratification from having a producer trust you enough to use products and then to hear, if I get a rep that calls me and say, “Hey, you know, that herd we put on convert or that herd we did this with, or did that with,” they seen tremendous results.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dan Hoying
To me, it doesn’t make the hair on the back of my neck stand up, but…
Scott Zehr
It, well, it’s, it’s that fee, it’s that feeling though. Right. And you touched on that, right? It’s you and I growing up on the dairy and I mean, your passion is still involved in, cattle, beef and dairy. And we’ve both found this kind of new lane, if you would, to where we both have tremendous admiration, especially for dairy, but probably agriculture, livestock in general.
And, we realized for whatever reason, whatever circumstance it became clear to us that actually being on the production agriculture side wasn’t the right avenue for us to live out that passion.
Dan Hoying
Right.
Scott Zehr
And, I think we’ve probably both been pretty fortunate to where, like you said, you have this ability to make a difference. And I think for me, and as long as I’ve known you, I think it’s like wanting to take that passion to make a difference within dairy. And now we just get to do it across more farms rather than just our own.
Dan Hoying
We all work with, especially in the Select Sires Federation, passionate reps who are passionate about show animals, high type, good type, good quality cows. And you and I are both that. But we’re also about taking that to another level If we can help that producer solve a problem, whether it’s having calf problems or getting cows bred or something like that, how much better, I don’t know if that’s the right term, but my God, you walk away from that farm. Holy cow.
I really, rather than go and look at his two year olds and see all these flashy two year olds. Well, did he sell half of them because he couldn’t get them bred back because he had a toxin problem with these feed?
Or, or these always use the comment where the guy said, “all these damn high genomic cows, the bulls that I’m using, these heifers aren’t milking like they should.”
Well, it’s because you about killed them when they were calves, you know? And did nothing but treat them poorly and put them in a poor environment, they’ll never reach their genetic potential. And all of a sudden here they are, you’re missing an opportunity as…
Scott Zehr
I love it when you get wrapped up like this.
Dan Hoying
You know? And to me, you walked away from that farm and you’re thinking, “Oh, well, I don’t care. I’m busy today. Let him deal with those calf problems. That’s a veterinary issue.”
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dan Hoying
No, you got a personal relationship with that guy. And every rep that I know, technician that works in this industry, you have that with your producers. When you get invited to their family wedding, you know, my wife always makes fun.
She’d last cause I’ll get invited to a rep’s wedding in Wisconsin or in Michigan. And you go up there and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, who are all these people?” And you’re like, how did you get here? Well, you know, you got a personal enough relationship with them. And that’s the same with, producers.
I can remember an old technician, a guy was Floyd Jones was his name. And he, was still breeding cows well into his seventies, which I don’t recommend that for anybody. But he was constantly going out every day. He may have only bred two or three cows at the end of his tenure. But he would stop in and see people.
And he always brought a tie and an overcoat because he usually had to go to a funeral home because most of his customers, they were getting old enough like he was, that they were starting to die. Or he put the overcoat and a tie on because he got invited to a wedding, you know, but oh my gosh, to have relationships like that. And how the heck did we turn from interviewing Dan Hoying to talk about personal relationship?
Scott Zehr
Well, it’s part of it though, Dan. And, we talk a lot about this ag industry in the U.S. where we, work to be small, right. It’s, two, three percent of the entire population out of 330 million people.
And well, if you think the world is small go spend any amount of time working with an agriculture because it becomes, I mean, honestly, I’ve been in this business 11 years in the professional side you know, supporting dairy and beef farmers in the U.S., and the amount of people you run into that either, you maybe have met once at a conference.
But a better example would be, I think it was the, Penn state nutrition workshop I went to last year. And I’m visiting with a couple people at the table during lunch. And, I mentioned that’s what’s your name? Scott Zerh Oh, are you related to this person? Do you know this person? They’re from New York. And it’s, all of a sudden, the circle is there. Like, it’s a very small world. So, the relationships matter. And, you know, like you said a good name travels a lot slower than a bad name.
And I want to take a quick minute, because I, You know, our, our audience may not realize this about Agrarian. So roughly 25 ish years ago a company out of Ohio reached out to Agrarian and said, “Hey, can you guys help out with mycotoxins? Does your technology work in that area?”
And we felt like it did. And we also have some, what we would call our legacy products, if you would, that the Select Sires Federation has been a very good distributor for us since 25 years ago with our Convert Gel. We have a Convert Big Calf. We have some calcium bolus now that’s research backed. We have a microbial gel and a microbial bolus.
So I just wanted to frame that up for the listeners. So Dan, your responsibility as the national farm program manager is to manage that entire Select Sires account. That’s been, you know, being built for 25 years. That’s pretty much, sums it up, I guess.
Dan Hoying
I don’t know if you would call managing it. Supporting it, either to help educate, to help train.
Scott Zehr
Yep, that’s probably a better way to.
Dan Hoying
And that’s probably one thing that I found out is in the six plus months that I’ve done this is there’s not near enough of me to go around as you see, there’s plenty of me to go around. But it’s interesting how you started on the Select Sires and how it got started. And I think it’s up to 27 years ago.
But the research really was done with a herd in Ohio called Apple Notch. And a guy by the name of John Beckman, who used to do some consulting work for Select Sires. Now I’m showing my age, but they bought in and said, all right, because back then, remember the high type bulls.
The daughters were terrible for getting bred back. Remember no name, no name, Matt was notorious. His daughters just would not breed back. So high type correlated to cows wouldn’t breed back. So then they were getting milk production and cows weren’t breeding back. Like, okay, what’s going on here?
So, found a product from Agrarian that helped that. So since then it has evolved as we know, mycotoxins has evolved to where testing is now pretty accurate and it’s on the forefront. When there’s issues with herds and problems with health and repro we got to research to back that up, which is really cool.
You know, that’s one of the things I tell producers. I said, this is 27 years. Do you have anything on this farm that’s that old other than yourself, you know? And how many products have come and gone, that are not around anymore.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. the staying power of these unique bacteria that we have, these cell wall deficient beneficial bacteria is, I mean, outside of digging up clay and out of the ground and sticking it in the feed for a binder which Dr. Roth on another episode of Ruminate This, we went into the Cajal binder efficiency study. So, just thinking about different products and, you know, there’s ingredients out there, but to stick around this long, I think it says something.
Dan Hoying
I can remember Dave Thorbond, who is still the CEO at Select Sire, saying this years ago at a national sales conference: “It’s up to each and every one of you to understand every tool in your toolbox, at least have an understanding so you can present that information to that producer.” So that would be my hope is guys understand it enough that you can at least explain or at least know when competitors are not telling the truth to their customers.
Scott Zehr
Yep.
Dan Hoying
Cause ultimately…
Scott Zehr
And unfortunately it happens, you know?
Dan Hoying
It’s their livelihood, you know? And if you don’t do what you can to keep that producer in business, you know what,? They’re not going to be in business.
Scott Zehr
So, Dan, you have said it, I’m not going to pick on you about when you mentioned showing how old you are, but you spent a number of years obviously in this industry. So two things I’d like to kind of ask you about.
I think one would be who are some of the mentors you’ve had along the way and what about those mentors was kind of impactful on your career or life. I think when we talk about relationships, I really encourage people to seek out somebody that’s going to be able to help them along the way.
Dan Hoying
Scott, there was quite a few you know, some of the old guard from Lon Peters to Charlie will to Joel Mergler. There’s some,
Scott Zehr
Oh, Joel. Yeah.
Dan Hoying
Select Sires reps. Some are still in the field. And what I valued from them were several things was they loved their customers. You know, in this day and age, and I was guilty of that. When you have another area or somebody needs an area, take some of your customers, my God, you don’t want to let them go. They’re your friends. You worked hard to get them. You got invested your personal time, sweat, equity, and everything. And the other part, what I value on these guys, their willingness to learn new things.
Too many guys. Oh, I, can read you every pedigree on every bull that ever existed. Can you talk to him about cow manager? Can you talk to him about, you know, beef on dairy or something like that? Or any of the products that are available to you? Or recognize when there’s an opportunity?
And I think that’s what I value out of these seasoned veterans. One, you know, they showed up every day and they valued their customers. But they had that customer service. And they were willing to learn and help that customer if it was something out of their comfort zone, you know. We all have those areas, but the old, well, it’s a new cliche, get comfortable being uncomfortable.
And, that’s part of it. Because in today’s world, with less dairies and bigger dairies, if you don’t do that or set yourself apart, competition will.
Scott Zehr
Oh, for sure.
Dan Hoying
You know, you show up in the, in the tanks full of competitor semen.
Scott Zehr
So you mentioned your wife, Brenda. You guys have been married a long time. You guys have, you know, really back in your technician days and farming days, raised a couple of kids. What are some hobbies that Dan and Brenda have? That…
Dan Hoying
Babysitting grandkids.
Scott Zehr
Babysitting, I knew you were going to say that. I knew you were going to say that.
Dan Hoying
We have a five year old.
Scott Zehr
What’s that like? What’s that like, Dan?
Dan Hoying
We have five year old and twins that are two and a half. And we still live on the family farm. Actually, we just had them this weekend. Their parents got away. And you know, when you have three kids under five or five or younger, it’s pretty tough. And they both got full time jobs besides raising these kids.
So we’re more than happy to, to help them out and we have, and we’ll bring them to the farm and the oldest is Brooks and he loves to go in the barn up to the hay mile and tell him how we used to fill it up to the rafters. And he gets to see the raccoons, you know, that are there. And he thinks they’re bad and then sees the cats and then we get to go on a tractor rides and he’s asking a million questions, but that part is a hobby whatever, a responsibility as a grandparent that is second to none. And, you know, I always tell, make the joke,iIf I knew grandparents were going to be so cool, would have skipped having kids. But my two daughters probably disagree with that.
Scott Zehr
But then you’ll become the weird uncle though.
Dan Hoying
Yeah. But that’s, that’s mainly it. Hobbies…
Scott Zehr
You have quite the green thumb though, too, right?
Dan Hoying
Yeah, we grow a bunch of, we got a big garden, kind of scratches my old farmer’s itch, you know, and playing with that and put fungicide on sweet corn and, you know, making sure it’s as good as possible. That part and, that’s pretty much what Dan and Brenda Hoang been married 41 years. So…
Scott Zehr
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Summer and I are a little, a little behind you yet where well, we’ll be nine years this year. Nine years this year.
Dan Hoying
A long way to go.
Scott Zehr
But you’re like, yeah yeah, I mean, a couple of years, I mean, you’re, you’re what? Pushing 50 now? We’ll go with that. Right.
You’ve had opportunities to work in a lot of different I’m going to say settings from being a technician, doing some sales work that way. One-on-one, with producers, beef, dairy, and you, you’ve mentioned the, people, throughout your career that have had an impact on you. But what what would you say if somebody’s out there and they’re maybe new to the ag industry how do you go about being a part of and building a successful team?
Dan Hoying
It’s funny. I spoke to a group of FFA kids in high school last year, and there was 80 some kids in there. And when we were done, the teacher asked one of the students, what did you learn from his presentation, my presentation?
And you know, the response was, he said, one of the things I suggested was don’t burn bridges. You never know when you’re going to need that person or when you’re going to come back and get into that field. And that was kind of my case because I grew up on a dairy. I owned a dairy. I always tell people, I ate from both sides of the feed bunk.
You know, I was, I was a purchaser of semen, hated salesmen. And I turned around and I’m a technician and I’m trying to sell them semen. So, I think that understanding has helped, making sure that producer is aware and what you can offer and, have some thick skin if they tell you, no, don’t run away and never go back.
And I hear this once in a while with the reps is, “Oh, let’s stop at this dairy. Oh, that dairy. He told me no, five years ago, I haven’t been back out at SOB.” Hold it. You know, you never know when there’s an opportunity and when you can help them, it’s, rather than totally brushing them off, there’s an opportunity there.
So that’s kind of what I would tell people is, you know, be willing to learn, be willing to commit yourself to a personal relationship. Does that mean taking a phone call at seven o’clock on a Thursday night? Sometimes.
Scott Zehr
Sometimes.
Dan Hoying
I had a herd, he used ABS semen as much as he, it was 50, 50. And he called me at seven o’clock on a Friday night, he was just down the road and he still had the semen in the cow. He couldn’t pass the rod. Hey, can you come over and breed this cow? And it was with ABS semen. Do you know what? The next order and everyone after that was with me.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. I think, you know, and that, speaks to what is actually quite a theme within the Agrarian organization. And everybody I’ve talked to so far, and believe me folks, these calls are not scripted. Every person so far has spoke to what I would basically call the servant leadership mentality.
And, I think when, you know, if you’re getting into agriculture, maybe you’ve, through your whole life up to this point, or you’re in agriculture, or maybe you haven’t been exposed to agriculture, but you feel like this is where it’s going.
You know, Dan being a servant is not derogatory. it doesn’t mean you let people walk all over you. It means that you understand that in order to elevate yourself, you have to first elevate those around you. And that’s something that I do appreciate about the team that we have here with Agrarian from yourself, Dr. Roth.
You know, we see it with Chad, with Nick and really everybody. And so I think that’s something cool that is fun to be a part of. Yeah, I mean, it’s funny because, you know, we all have different personalities, right? And Dan, your passion just bubbles right out of you.
And, your desire to make a difference. And I, I think that’s something pretty cool that people can look at and learn from. And yeah, just wanted to pass that along to you as well. And so keep doing that, Dan.
Dan Hoying
Well, thank you, Scott. I wouldn’t have known you as well as I do. I would think you were maybe trying to blow smoke or something.
Scott Zehr
Well, you know, we do get into some sparring matches sometimes. The one thing that I’ve learned about Dan Hoying since I met you, and that goes back to well, Dan, I think the first time I met you would’ve been like February of 2014.
Dan Hoying
At Select Check School.
Scott Zehr
At Select Check School. That’s right. We went out Fair Oaks to…
Dan Hoying
Yep.
Scott Zehr
Fair Oaks Dairy. We learned I, I was a technician then. You were already with Agrarian then. And myself and my, and you…
Dan Hoying
And you knew it all.
Scott Zehr
You know what? It’s kind of funny. You say that. So I learned how to breed cows when I was 18. So that had been 2003. So this is 11 years later. And when you say, I would say at that point in my life, I had already learned that I didn’t know everything, but the one thing that I was sure about when I went to work for Select is I knew how to breed cows, but…
Dan Hoying
You took home from slack check school, the one comment I said about using products to get a foot in the door. And that’s exactly what got you started.
Scott Zehr
It is actually. And I’ll, I’ll actually tell that story quickly. I really thought that I knew how to breed cows and then I was doing some relief work on a 2000 ish cow dairy. And then my first, report card came back with, vet check in the, regular technician was running 37, 38%, and my first herd check was 14%.
And Pete, Pete looks at me, he goes. I thought you knew what you were doing and, and so. Yeah, I, I do remember that though. And, and to your point your presentation at Select Check you know, using like an utterment product that we carried or the convert gel as a way to start a conversation at a dairy.
And I can remember driving home and, it was a different mentality back then, the way the people that were managing the breeding business in the Northeast looked at non semen product sales to where it was like, Hey, don’t really waste your time on that stuff, focus on what you’re supposed to be doing and. And then, you know, you were talking about it from the perspective of, it can be a conversation starter, but also it’s an opportunity to make a difference.
And so I remember pulling in this farm. The guy’s name is Mike. He actually just sold his dairy about a year and a half ago. I’m due to go see Mike cause he’s a pretty good dude. But I pulled in the driveway the one day and I’d been calling on him for six months or whatever, and trying to convince him to, Hey, let me breed your cows.
And I pulled in the driveway that day and there was a calf in the hutch outside the barn and, just beautiful red and white heifer calf, and she was not feeling good. She was pretty well flat out, like, probably the vet was going to be coming to euthanize that calf. And I, I remember I, I walked in, I, I pulled up and I’m like, “Ugh, here’s an idea.”
So I grabbed a tube of convert you know, it was a multi, our multi dose tube. I, what are they? 15, 16, 17 bucks, somewhere in there. So I went in and, and Mike, is a type A guy. Like you got to go in on your A game with Mike. And I saw, Hey, hey Fosh, what’s up? And he was telling me and I said, what’s the deal with this red calf?
He’s like, Oh, he said, we’re gonna have to put her down. She’s only a couple of three days old and she got really bad diarrhea, completely dehydrated. I mean, her eyes were starting to suck back in her head a little bit, even. And I said, well, hey, I said, I got this stuff that this guy on Ohio or when I went out to Indiana said that it’ll practically bring Kaz back from the dead. It’s you know, and I, I honestly was being a little bit facetious about it. I was like, I don’t know if this stuff’s any good.
Dan Hoying
Only if they’d been dead under a half hour.
Scott Zehr
Yeah, exactly. And, he goes, I ain’t, I’m not buying this crap to, like, she’s gonna die. I’m like, well, I’ll tell you what. And I handed him a 20 bill. I said, I’ll buy the first tube out of this case. I had one case and that was what was in the car that I inherited when I took over. I had one case, there’s six tubes in a case.
I handed him the 20 bucks and I said, I’ll pay for the tube. I’m going to give the calf this product. And when I come back tomorrow to check on it, if it’s still alive, you’re buying the rest of the case and giving me my 20 bucks back. And he was like, all right, deal. So I went out and you know, our, our treatment dose is 15 cc’s of gel.
Well, I wasn’t taking any chances. So I gave her all 60 cc and grabbed a bottle of warm water through put, put a little bit in her and I tried to get her to suckle on it, just tried to help wash it down and better do. And I got there, no, he called me that night at like 6:30. So this is probably like nine o’clock in the morning when all this went down.
He called me at like 6:30 that night. And he goes, what the hell did you do to that calf? I said, well, how long did she stay alive for? He goes, I pulled in tonight and he said, she’s freaking standing up. I go, what? He goes, yeah, like I ran in and mixed up some milk replacer and she sucked down a whole bottle of milk.
And like, what’d you, and I was like, well, that’s, that’s pretty impressive. So the next day I made him buy the rest of that case. And yeah, I mean, it’s kind of guess you would say the rest is history. But Mike’s kind of like Dan, you gotta be on your a game when you’re going to go sparring with Dan Hoying.
Dan Hoying
Hey, this is a cool story. When you were talking about your first experience, one of my first ones was I went with a rep and he would not take me to his biggest herd, which was at that time, 2,500 cows. I’m not bringing you there to risk you putting them on DTX and it failing. I got all this semen business, I’m gonna keep that.
I said, well, what if things go, go south? Oh, no. Well, it didn’t take more than a month. Did an SRS report there. Repro’s gone, going to crap. What do we do? Oh, I’m gonna put in higher SCR bulls, more fertile bulls. Oh, that’ll fix the problem. Long and behold, they had a huge toxin problem. It got fixed because the nutritionist had access to DTX.
But it took that owner of that herd finally got fed up because cows weren’t getting bred and high conception bulls are not, you know, and I know that that’s always not the answer. And he ended up losing that herds business a hundred percent. Gen X came in, took all the business. He ended up getting it back, but it was funny how he was so afraid to put product in at a customer for fear. It wasn’t going to work.
Scott Zehr
Fear of the unknown, right?
Dan Hoying
You should have been afraid not to do it versus be afraid to do it.
Scott Zehr
Well, I think the, you know, I think the hidden lesson there is of the first handful of customers that I ever picked up his name was Ken I won’t give out his last name, but Ken. And he said something to me that I thought was, really for me at that point in my young professional career off the farm, it was actually a pretty big game changer.
And his comment was: “You know, if you’re going to work with me on the dairy and breeding and genetics and that kind of stuff, I’m just going to tell you right now, I dislike pretty much anything that starts with re. I don’t like reactive. I don’t like reactionary. I want pro people. I want proactive. I want professional.”
I want you know, and so it was kind of a funny little thing and, it became kind of a joke, it’s like, don’t be re. And, boy, when you, have that servant mentality and if you don’t, you know, some people I think are kind of geared that way naturally.
But you can develop it to where you show an interest, you demonstrate that you care you demonstrate that you are there for the betterment of the customer, not the betterment of yourself. And I think that’s something that you have done a great job of, of kind of imprinting on, some people where, Hey, be the proactive guy.
Dan Hoying
Help the customer because they need help. Don’t make a sale thinking, the commissions, the dollar signs going off in your head. If you sell semen or you sell products thinking, well, I’m going to sell him more expensive bulls, that may not be what he needs. Or, well, I’d love to put everyone in my herds on biocycle plus he may be perfectly fine and do just as well with DTX, which is a cheaper product that performs admirably and probably better.
And you save that customer some money. Yeah. Did it affect your commissions a little bit? But take that over the lifetime of that producer? Oh my gosh. Versus have that mentality of I’m going to this farm and see how much I can get out of him today. And we see that. There’s a company that’s still in business. And we always claim that’s how their sales were was how fast and how much can I take from him today?
Scott Zehr
Ask not what you can do for your, what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.
Dan Hoying
Exactly.
Scott Zehr
Well, Dan, I have kind of one final question I’d like to ask you. And, I think I know what you’re going to say, but what to you is so special about the ag industry?
Dan Hoying
Passion of the people. When you cry, when you have to put your favorite cow or calf down that passion, people that are not in the industry, have no clue what we do getting up in the middle of the night cause we got a cow calving. Or, you know, you can’t make church on Sunday because you got a water tank running over.
You got to mix feed cause the cows are, are worse yet. In the middle of the night, cows and your heifers got out or something like that. To me, working with that group of people is like nothing else, you know? And I got family that are in other business world and when the weekend comes, they can turn it off.
If you’re a dairyman or a beef producer, it’s, you never turn it off. I always told my wife when I came in at the end of the day, it was prioritizing, what jobs can you put off till tomorrow? Because you’re tired and you want to maybe see the kids or they’re already in bed. But you do what’s mandatory at 10 o’clock at night, because you know, you got to get up at four the next morning and do it all again. And what can get put off till the next day.
But, my gosh, you talk about that passion and that commitment to your animals and like no industry. You’re around those cows. You know, I’m all by heart, you got a name, you go up as busy as you are and as tired as you are, give a cow a scratch behind the ear, you know, or something like that, because, there’s that love that you can’t replace. And that’s, to me is cool, if you get to work in that, that industry in that world.
Scott Zehr
Amen man. What a way to wrap that up. Well, Dan, I, I want to thank you for taking some time out of your day today to visit with us on Ruminate This and keep spreading that across the people that you encounter.
And just keep making a difference. Cause I, I think more people need to see there’s a lot of benefit to approaching what you do in life with a lot of passion. And I think you’ve been somebody that’s demonstrated that. So keep it up, Dan. And thanks again.
And for those of you tuning in be looking for another episode of Ruminate This very soon. So have a great week, everybody.
