Whitney + Kelsey Birschbach Talk Manufacturing in Agriculture + Family Business

Introduction

Adam: This WiLL Cast was with the
Bierschbach sisters, who are part of a local family business here in Fond du
Lac County. They’re in farming and farming supply. They have two businesses.
Whitney works with Agromatic, which is focused on keeping cows happy — a lot of
barn environment products. That’s the longer-standing of the two arms. Her
sister Kelsey helps run Davis Plastic, a newer acquisition focused on equine —
horse stuff. The best example is the plastic hoof cups that protect the hoof.
It’s injection-molded plastic.

Becca: It was interesting peeling back
the onion and learning about all the businesses that help support everything in
the area. The family business perspective was super interesting. Both went to
school, worked elsewhere for a while, and came back to join the family
business. Cool to see that next-generation energy pushing things forward. It
was also fun to hear them talk about the difference between dairy cattle — very
much livestock — and the equine market, which is much more pet-driven. It’s a
very different mindset. They seem similar, but it’s definitely niche and
requires a different approach.

Adam: One’s a luxury and one’s a
necessity, but both have similar needs. This WiLL Cast is brought to you by the
Ledge Games. You can still go to LedgeGames.com and make a donation. Sign up
for next year — September 30th, last Saturday in September. It was a great
event, great weather, a lot of new sponsors and partners. We had a WiLL team
member who won the men’s division and a WiLL family member who won the women’s
division.

Growing Up in Farm Country

Adam: So you guys live in the area?

Whitney: We were born and raised in
the Lamartine area. I live in town now, and she lives out on the family farm,
right in the Rosendale area.

Adam: What do you guys do?

Whitney: I’m in sales at Agromatic.
Our father owns it. I’ve been there for about five years. Before that, I worked
at Ferguson Enterprises doing inside sales, residential plumbing. Then I joined
the family business. I’m in outside sales now, but I help with everything —
family business, you don’t have one position. You wear a lot of hats.

Kelsey: I’m manager, kind of all hats,
at Davis Plastic over in Brandon. We focus mainly on horse products. We do dip
molding, slush molding, all based off of a heavy-duty PVC plastic. It started
back in 1987, and in January our dad Dean purchased it. We’ve been expanding.
We do all the manufacturing in-house — dipping equipment, ovens, a whole line
of sewers that sew all of our products. We base it off of fully made in the
United States.

Adam: Speaking our language.

Kelsey: We try to leverage that over
our competitors, because not many people can say that.

Agromatic: Everything Inside the Dairy Barn

Adam: What’s the overview of the
solutions for the farming community?

Whitney: Essentially everything inside
the dairy environment minus the milking equipment. It’s cow comfort products —
flexible freestyle versus steel stalls to prevent lesions, rubber flooring
because cows should always be walking on rubber, ventilation to keep them cool,
headlocks. We have a new system — a flexible pipe so cows are never hitting a
steel bar while eating. It’s called a Free Feed system. We’re also doing
manufacturing — the welding, machining, steel — but we’re also importing quite
a bit. It’s a hybrid of manufacturing and distribution, with those farmer
relationships and a one-stop solution for everything inside the barn. We
manufacture our own silage packer and a flat-floor parlor that we’ve made for
over 50–60 years.

Davis Plastic: The Molding Process

Adam: I’m a manufacturing geek — what
is the molding process like?

Kelsey: It starts as a liquid. The
molds are kind of the shape of a hoof. They’re dipped into that liquid plastic
with a hot mold — about 400 degrees. Dipped in for a certain amount of time,
then taken out and cooked in another oven. The only thing we don’t do is make
our own molds — we send that to a foundry. Within the last four months, we’ve
expanded to custom projects with our plastisol. We have a different customer
base now — not just equine. It’s construction and safety boots. Plastisol is
the same material as rain boots or traffic cones. It’s a niche market, not many
people can do it, and we’re set up for it.

Wisconsin Farming Culture

Adam: For people not from Wisconsin —
if you were to describe southeastern Wisconsin, the farming community, the
skill sets — what does that look like?

Whitney: It’s our culture, we’re used
to that. I do go out west and it’s completely different. All those cows are
outside and all these cows are inside. Even we call it the parlor — where cows
are getting milked, they call that the barn. And it’s not your red barn
stereotype nowadays. You’re seeing a lot of black and blue.

Kelsey: If I could explain it best,
it’s just like one big family. Everybody knows everybody, or at least knows
somebody who knows them.

Adam: Such a huge part of the economy.
From there you have all the food processing companies — Grande Cheese, Baker
Cheese was just bought by Sargento — then all the contractors to support that.
There’s a lot of overlap with manufacturing in the automation systems and that
skill base. A farmer is taking care of cows, planting crops, harvesting crops,
also designing equipment, maintaining equipment, fixing equipment. The range of
skill sets is super interesting.

Becca: I have the answer for why barns
are red. Back in the day they used linseed oil to seal them, which naturally
goes that color direction. Then there are two theories. One is that rich
farmers would add blood from the recent slaughter. The other is they’d add
rust, because rust is poisonous to most fungi, preventing decay. That’s what
gives it historically that burnt orange to red color.

Robotic Milking Systems

Adam: When Sadie from Envision was
here, she discussed a farm in Brandon — under 200 head of cattle — updating
with new technology, very successful.

Whitney: That would be my grandpa’s
best friend’s son. They have two Lely robots. There’s all sorts of different
milking equipment — Lely, DeLaval, BouMatic — mostly from Europe. It’s a huge
stall-size for a Holstein to walk in. There’s a little feed enticement. The
robot knows if a cow is just coming in for a snack and won’t set her up to be
milked. It’s got a screen that tells you everything about that cow because
she’s wearing a tag — last time milked, output, medications. It’s like a little
component room inside the barn, usually dark so you don’t disrupt the cow. Once
you get the cows acclimated, it just kind of runs itself.

Adam: Any farmer I talk to, one of
their biggest problems is finding people to milk cows. If you’re eliminating
all that manpower, that’s huge.

Cows Are a Number, Horses Are a Pet

Kelsey: I’m used to the agriculture
side, the dairy side. I don’t know if this is a politically correct way of
saying it, but cows are a number and horses are a pet. It’s just completely
different. We sell a lot to distributors, trying to get more towards direct-to-consumer.
When we first came on, there was not as much direct customer interaction, but
lately we’ve had more.

Adam: Both channels are super
important. It’s nice when you have a direct line of communication to your
customers — each channel can learn from each other.

Working in the Family Business

Adam: Can you talk about what it’s
like working for a family business?

Kelsey: It definitely has its
challenges, but also its perks. We’re lucky that Whitney’s at Agromatic and I’m
at Davis. Having a dad like we do, he kind of just says yes all the time — yes
for new business. He commits to customer requests and then says, here you go.
The hardest thing is having to prove ourselves. People have that pre-assumed
notion that this was handed to you. I’m only 24 and running a business. I have
employees that are 50, 60. But I love a challenge. The one thing I take away
every day is it’s all personal. A small family business — it’s all personal.

Whitney: Same line — earning your
keep. We’re grateful for it. I think we both agree we’re grateful that we came
from bigger corporations. We didn’t just come right out of college. We came in
with some perspective.

Adam: It probably forces you to think
long-term. There’s going to be good times, bad times, pandemics, recessions.
You’re thinking in decade chunks as opposed to 10-minute chunks. That’s a
really important thing regardless of whether it’s a family business or anything.

Manufacturing & Farming: Cultural Overlap

Adam: It’s similar to manufacturing
where some of the people have been doing it for a while and just don’t like
change. Keep the head down and keep going forward. Eventually, once you’re
surrounded by a group of people that embrace change and acknowledge mistakes
and move on — that’s a cultural shift. The average age at Wisconsin Lighting
Lab is 33 years old. That is unheard of in manufacturing. Eventually it’s going
to happen in farming too. It’s just a matter of listening to people that have
done it and adopting the good ideas, but also not being discouraged about
people being set in their ways.

Becca: Everything you guys said —
farming and manufacturing align very much. There’s a line between implementing
the new and the pushback with the old-school mentality.

Engineering Growth & New Products

Adam: How big is each operation?

Kelsey: Davis has 17 employees.

Whitney: Agromatic usually averages
55–60. About 15–20 in the office. Sales staff are usually all over — Iowa, New
York, two Wisconsin people that go out west. Manufacturing shop is where the
majority of people are, plus two warehouses. I started five years ago and we
had one engineer. Now we’re at three, possibly four. Our dad is the one that
really changed Agromatic to be more on the manufacturing side.

Adam: Any new products on the horizon?

Whitney: We have World Dairy Expo
coming up in Madison at the Alliant Energy Center. A little sneak peek — we’ve
always made auger feeders and manure augers. But the bedding will go through
these augers, and these lights will heat it up to a certain degree that kills
about 99% of the pathogens. Compost solids is the future for bedding for
dairies. There’s a company here in Fond du Lac that does separators, and after
it goes through the separator, it would go through this auger and get heated
with these lights.

Adam: You should definitely send some
info back. When the pandemic first hit, we looked at public RFPs for UVC lights
— a certain LED chip with a radiation wavelength that destroys protein
structures in bacteria, viruses, and pathogens. We built a prototype with
samples from Seoul Semiconductor in South Korea but never went that route. We
actually have a board designed to drop right into our existing products — we
may have a solution we could talk about.

Becca: There’s Kenall, a company out
of Racine, that does healthcare lighting. They’re looking into how you can
apply UVC to a shop floor or general office space during off hours. Really cool
to see how that technology continues to evolve and hit agriculture.

Closing

Adam: Definitely keep us in the loop.
It was really fun to talk, and good luck with the businesses — two businesses!
It’s a lot of fun. Cool to learn about the sales, marketing, business
development, the product. That’s a very Wisconsin thing — multi-faceted. Thank
you very much for coming on.

Whitney: Thank you.

Kelsey: Keep doing your thing.