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Empower Your Dairy. Enhance Your Future. Contact us today • 800-992-1344
GREETINGS FROM YOUR WADHIA MANAGER
Hello to all! Hope your year went well and sped by as quickly as ours did. It seems like last month I was writing this message for the 2023 book. The new Combifoss FT machine is up and running! This was quite a change from our old Bentley, a difference in some 30 years of technology. As the lab staff become more comfortable with it we will be offering some new results such as MUN.
Our field technicians have shrunk to 7. We lost 2 on the east side but gained an excellent replacement with Kristina Allman taking the reins over. She is most eager to work with dairymen on the east side. Call her! I can’t thank our technicians enough for another year of outstanding service. Most of us are past 65 and still getting the job done! We also lost a member of our WADHIA family with the passing of Eric Herrin. You will be missed. Unfortunately we lost a few more herds and we continue to adjust with the changing times. We are working hard to keep costs down and provide the same high quality service that is our standard.
As 2025 unfolds we will be eager to meet your testing needs.
With all the changes in 2023 and 2024 I am getting settled in to my many hats, Lab Manager, Goat Program Coordinator and Data Entry Coordinator. In November I received more training on the new Foss Machine and now have it up and running. So, at this time we can now offer Butterfat, Protein, Lactose, SNF, MUM, and SCC.
We tested 201 Goat herds from 31 states. That will be going up with Willamette Dairy no longer offering Goat testing in 2025. Some herds will be coming here and some will be going to other DHIA’s.
As always it has been a pleasure working with all the herds.
Julie Barnes, Lab Manager, Goat Program Coordinator and Data Entry Coordinator
METER SHOP MESSAGE:
Another year has come and gone, and I am still remarkably busy in the meter shop. It was a tough year for me as I lost my husband Eric of 48 years. I had been training him to be my back up in the meter shop.
The National Quality Certification came January 2025, and I am proud to let you know we passed for another year. QC has also approved several more models of scales that can be certified for testing.
We are retiring our old Tru-test Farmer and the 1st Generation of auto samplers. Also, we have started replacing our Hanson farm scales with new smaller digital scales for our cow testers.
The number of goat scales have not surpassed the meters yet, but they are catching up quickly. We have gotten several new goat herds and scales from other processing centers which have closed this past year.
I want to thank all the technician’s cow and goat for all your cooperation in getting the equipment to us in a timely manner. It is important that we are on time for QC.
I look forward to serving your calibration needs in the future. -Donna Herrin
Greg Irwin
Julie Barnes
Donna Herrin
Kathy Sackman says dairy is a ‘really noble profession’
By Troy Schulz For the Tribune
Kathy Sackman’s 40-plus-year career at the Washington Dairy Herd Improvement Association (DHIA) wasn’t so much a grand plan as it was circumstance.
“I was a backup for another gal who did data entry. She got fired, I got her job. Then I inherited a bookkeeping job when my predecessor died,” she mused.
The 64-year-old Sedro-Woolley resident’s career at the DHIA began when she was 23. She retired in May 2022, when she was 62.
Her first days on the job were less than auspicious, thanks to circumstances beyond her control.
“Originally, I did milk testing in a lab, one sample at a time. Bob McCauley, the head guy at the time who hired me, didn’t realize I was left-handed until my first day, when he saw me running tests. All the equipment was set up for the right hand,” Sackman recalled.
She made it work, though.
“[McCauley] said ‘Man, if I knew you’re a left handed you would have never gotten the job.’ [But] he was really surprised on how well I did,” she chuckled.
From there, Sackman moved up into troubleshooting farm equipment, a position that saw frequent travel to dairies across the Pacific Northwest
“My biggest thing was goat farms. When I started, we only had like four of them. Then one day I got a phone call from a gal in Oregon, asking ‘Do you guys test goat’s milk?’ Well, yeah. She asked, ‘What are your prices?’ When I told her, she said ‘Oh my goodness, you are so much cheaper than what we’re paying for.’ So I inherited all the Oregon herds,” Sackman said.
It became Sackman’s responsibility to both test samples and troubleshoot farm machinery as far south as Northern California.
“I would go down one big, long trip. Leave early in the morning and then come home late,” Sackman said.
It soon became a family affair. “My husband helped me out. My son went a couple times, my daughter went a couple times. When we went there, we would just stay overnight, make a day of it.”
Several decades of traveling to and fro dairies across the region opened Sackman’s eyes to inner workings of the industry that most outsiders never see.
“What most people don’t realize about the hard work that dairy has put in. It’s not a nine-to-five job, where you get the weekends off. You’re constantly taking care of cows and goats, taking care of feed, taking care of everything, and I really admire them. I think a lot of people think milk just comes from the store, and they don’t know the back end of it,” Sackman said.
She’s also witnessed firsthand how the industry has evolved over time.
“Everything used to be everything done by hand. Milk was weighed in buckets before I got started, and then they used centrifuges. These big, round pots that have these little bottles in them, with a skinny neck that has increments on it. You pour milk in each of the bottles, spring them, and the fat comes to the top, and then you measure that fat via the increments,” Sackman said.
As the tester, it would be her job to collect the samples, record them, and return them to the dairy, usually all in the same day.
“Now a lot of the dairies have gone to robots. The cows come in and out when they want to. Robots hook up the milking machines and collect samples. They can also see if their cows are sick before they’re before they show signs,” Sackman said.
Automation also came for Sackman’s testing process.
“We just put little bottles of milk from each cow on a rack of 20, and they go through the machine. It does all the work,” Sackman said.
The importance of dairy farming to Whatcom County is not lost on her, even as it can sometimes be a thankless occupation.
“What I’m seeing is farmers don’t want their kids involved in it, because it’s such a hard profession, and it’s not a huge money maker unless you have tons of cows. There’s been a lot of farms up here, up in Lynden that sold out, went to growing fruit ... the dairies up around here are disappearing,” Sackman said.
It’s not a lost cause, however. Sackman remains optimistic that the younger generation of dairy farmers can continue to uphold the family traditions, with a few changes.
“I think some of the younger generations are getting back into it, but they’re doing it on a smaller scale, and they’re making cheese out of it. They’re getting their license to sell their milk out of their farms, ice cream. Lot of the goat dairies are, I would say 80% of them, are run by women. They make mainly cheese on theirs,” she said
Now that she’s retired, Sackman and her husband have fulfilled the old retirement cliche - travel.
“We’ve been in London twice. We’ve been on cruises. We bought a trailer and a truck, and we’ve been to Yellowstone and Crater Lake along the coast. Just nice to be able to go when we want to go,” Sackman said.
Her decades-long career at the DHIA may have been an arduous one at times, but she has few regrets.
“I enjoyed talking to the dairymen, helping the dairymen out. I enjoyed working with the goat farms, seeing the different farms, seeing the new equipment coming in, going out to the dairies and meeting them. I think dairy is a really noble profession.”
