Spotlight: Nathan

Nathan Kuehnert

From 6 years old, Nathan Kuehnert loved his family’s dairy cows and developed an interest in how healthy and comfortable they were. While he helped around the farm with all sorts of necessary chores, his attention always rested on those Holsteins.

In his teen years he added a focus on dairy genetics. After graduating from Purdue University, he worked for a livestock genetics firm for a decade before leaving to work full-time at Kuehnert Dairy as Farm Manager. “It was always intriguing to me how I could match a cow’s strengths and weaknesses with a sire’s,” he says. “I like a good-looking cow that can produce a lot of milk; if you can breed a functionally sound cow, they will last longer. Plus, it’s easy to get up that early and milk every day when you’re looking at pretty cows.”

Business partners Nathan, his wife Sarah, brother Andrew, and sister-in-law Brittany are bullish early adopters of new technology — when it is an improvement for the cows first, and the humans second. One example was putting Fitbit-like trackers on the animals to monitor health and estrus; another was robotic milking. “We’ve always tried to be on the forefront of adopting technology wisely.”

These days, Kuehnert Dairy’s 50,000 annual visitors can interact with some of the 300 milking cows, which each give about 11 gallons — or 95 pounds — per day! More than three decades later, he’s still concerned with the comfort of “the girls”… including piping satellite radio into their barn. (Grunge ‘90s rock works better than classical music, believe it or not.)

Nathan and Sarah are celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary this year, and are parents to high-schoolers Allie and Bryar. About working with family, he notes it is both rewarding and challenging: “We’re really just excited to continue to tell our story to anyone who visits.”