The air in the farm office is thick with the scent of antiseptic and damp earth. Outside on a folding plastic table, slippery, pink reproductive tracts are laid out like a strange anatomy lesson.
This isn’t the sterile, hurried vet visit most expect. There is no rush to finish, no ticking clock. Instead, a crowd gathers. Workers, owners and managers lean in, drawn by a curiosity that usually gets buried under the weight of a daily chore list.
Michelle Schack doesn’t start by lecturing; she starts by inviting.
“We did a little in-the-office training where we talked about why what we were doing was important, and then we went outside. I had repro tracts and their AI guns, and they practiced,” Schack recalls. “I had three repro tracts, and I cut one open for us to look at. I explained to them the structure of the cervix.”
In moments like this, the hierarchy of the farm dissolves. Schack isn’t positioned as the untouchable expert at the center of the room. She is a facilitator, a guide and — crucially — a student.
“They were so excited to do this, and they had a lot of questions, really good questions,” Schack says. “We were all talking together. We were sharing things. I learned things. The breeders learned things. The owner learned things. We all were learning together.”
The Silicon Valley Roots of a Cow Vet
Schack’s journey to the dairy barn began in an unlikely place: the Bay Area of California. Growing up in the Silicon Valley, her world was surrounded by tech companies and not a lot of agriculture.
Her first connection to animals wasn’t through livestock but rather through a suburban 4-H group where she raised nine guide dog puppies for the blind. It was here, starting in the second grade, that she inadvertently began training for her future career — not just in animal care but also in the art of public advocacy.
When she reached the University of California, Davis, for her undergraduate degree, she assumed being a small animal vet was the only path. But after shadowing a practitioner, she realized she felt restricted by the 15-minute appointment model and the sterile walls of a clinic. She began to look for something that allowed for more space, more complexity and a deeper connection to the food system.
“I started exploring — asking, ‘Well, what else is there?’ I realized that there were all different kinds of vets, and I could do all different kinds of things,” she recalls. “I really just kept coming back to the cows. The cows were my favorite the whole time.”
By her third year of veterinary school, her choice was clear, though she was in the extreme minority. Out of her graduating class of 140, there were four students who tracked food animal medicine.
The High Cost of the Telephone Game
This instinct to pull people toward the table comes from seeing what happens when communication breaks down. In the dairy industry, the real problem is often a lack of communication — a high-stakes game of telephone that breaks down as the message gets passed further along the line.
“I think very often we speak to the farmers and then the farmers speak to their employees. But along the way, some of the messages are lost, especially as our farms get bigger,” Schack explains.
She doesn’t see this as a lack of effort but rather as a reality of the grueling environment.
“The employee on the farm has a very challenging job. Typically it’s very repetitive, very physical, in all weather, and it’s very common for them to just get stuck in a routine,” Schack says.
When employees are stuck in a routine without understanding the biological “why” behind their tasks, the animals are the ones who pay the price. Her response is simple: Change how the message is shared. It has become one of the most rewarding parts of her work.
“When I get to work with the people and the owner and the manager, and I can see them all connect, that’s a day that I’m very excited for. That’s my favorite part of my job,” Schack explains.
The Missed Piece: Collaborative Medicine
This experience shaped a simple belief: A veterinarian who only talks to cows is only doing half the job. In Schack’s view, the vet is just one piece of a massive, integrated team.
“It is common for cattle veterinarians to show up, check cows and go home. When you don’t make the time for the rest of the team, then you’re going to get left out of certain conversations,” she notes. “Producers are working with a whole team of people. When we all work together, we can do so much more.”
She defines that team broadly, including the nutritionist, the slaughterhouse, the semen sales rep and even the person who installed the fans and misters. This teamwork requires a specific kind of humility: the ability to recognize that the person delivering 40 calves a day might know more than the person with the medical degree.
“There are maternity workers that have been working in maternity for 40 years, and all they do all day is deliver calves. They are experts, and to pretend that they aren’t or to overpower them is not smart. They know a lot, and we should be listening to what they have to say,” Schack says.
Starting Earlier: Bridging the ‘Milk Gap’
Schack’s passion for education eventually led her to look even further back in the chain of understanding: to the children in her own community. After visiting her children’s kindergarten class to talk about her job, she was struck by a profound realization.
“None of them knew how milk gets from the cow to the grocery store. They don’t understand that there’s processing,” she says. “I think most people think cows come in to get milked, it goes in a bottle and then goes to the grocery store. But there are so many steps in between, and I don’t think it’s shared very well.”
She saw the same disconnect reflected in posts and comments on her social media, where she shares about dairy farming as the “Dairy Doc.” Concerned that others were filling that knowledge gap with information that may not reflect reality, Schack decided to take action.
“I wrote a children’s book,” Schack says. “Kids are sponges, and they want to know the right answer. So, I wrote a book that’s specifically geared at their level that explains milk processing in a simple way so they can actually see what happens.”
The book, “Milk From Cow to Carton,” is set to release in June. She hopes to get it into the hands of teachers so they have a factual, accessible resource for their classrooms.
Building Something That Scales
When training demands began to outpace her schedule, Schack and her partners at her veterinary practice looked for a way to scale and maintain that connection.
“We started creating videos for our clients, and they were so well received that pretty soon we had the whole co-op interested in using our training,” she says.
These training videos eventually grew into DairyKind, a national training platform that fills the gaps in on-farm education. The platform offers modules on everything from special needs cow care to calf weaning, ensuring that the “why” is never lost in the shuffle of farm growth.
This work has clarified her own identity. For years, Schack thought her value was her knowledge of the animal. Now, she realizes her value is her ability to connect the people who care for them.
“I thought that I was an animal person. Over the years I’ve learned that I’m not really an animal person, I’m a people person,” she reflects. “My nature is to work with other people and that makes me happy.”
At the end of the day, the work still looks like that first moment in the farm office: a group of people gathered around a table. Schack is there, not just to provide the answers but also to ensure that everyone — from the veteran maternity worker to the kindergarten student — is part of the conversation.
She knows that if you want to improve outcomes for cows, you have to start with the people.
