Willow Behrer Farms Wins National BQA Award

Willow Behrer Farms LLC wins National Beef Quality Assurance Award   

 Bedford –   

 The PA Beef Council is proud to announce that the state’s ninth National Dairy Beef Quality Assurance Award winner is Willow Behrer Farms LLC, owned by the Behrer Family of Spruce Creek, PA, Huntingdon County. 

Willow Behrer Farms LLC is known for their commitment to quality, cattle care and an incredible out of the box approach to the FARM 4.0 program. As Land O’ Lakes producers, they’ve been enrolled in FARM from the early stages and have adapted and shown incredible improvements in terms of their hands-on training for employees. 

Willow Behrer Farms LLC is owned and operated by Michael A. Behrer and his son Allen M. Behrer. The farmstead was originally settled in 1892 by Charles E. Beher with the original farmstead property consisting of 180 acres. The current operators are the 4th and 5th generation to run a dairy in the sprawling valley through Central Pennsylvania. The current dairy operation consists of ~1,000 milking cows with replacement females. The mission statement for Willow Behrer Farms is “to produce quality milk from happy cows and employees in a family business. While sharing our legacy of commitment with families that have breakfast with us”. 

Cow health and employees are top priority at Willow Behrer Farms. For the team at Willow Behrer, the FARM program has ignited a passion for employee growth and continuous improvement. Allen admits that when the initial FARM 4.0 program began to roll out, he had reservations about finding more time in the day to train employees on each specific protocol. That is when he and herd manager Pete Posnett had an idea, use technology to engage employees and incentives to keep them pushing forward. Willow Behrer uses WhatsApp and YouTube to deliver pre-recorded video trainings to over 20 farm employees. The videos offer training on critical control points for cattle care. With over 80 videos in their arsenal, employees can access, review and revisit them often as a refresher on protocols. They’ve created videos with help of employees on milking procedures, calf delivery, calf care, tube feeding a newborn calf and stockmanship just to name a few. 

Allen and his wife Casey traveled to Nashville, TN for the Cattle Industry Convention to accept the award. 

To learn more about the National Dairy Beef Quality Assurance Awards or the BQA program, contact Courtney Cowden Gray at [email protected] or 1-888-4BEEFPA. 

### 

The Pennsylvania Beef Council is a producer-controlled and funded organization, which administers the Beef Checkoff Program in Pennsylvania. The Beef Checkoff Program assesses $1 per head on the sale of live domestic and imported cattle, in addition to a comparable assessment on imported beef and beef products. Checkoff revenues may be used for promotion, education and research programs to improve the marketing climate for beef.