Enhancing dairy workforce safety and performance through adult‑learning‑optimized training on best milking practices

Commodities

• Animals: bovine
• Animal Products: dairy

Practices

• Animal Production: animal protection and health
• Education and Training: extension
• Sustainable Communities: leadership development

Dairy production in the United States increasingly relies on advanced milking technologies, data‑driven management, and improved animal welfare practices. However, the benefits of these innovations are limited by persistent workforce challenges, including labor shortages, high turnover, and inconsistent training. There is a lack of standardized, evidence-based bilingual training programs focused specifically on milking management practices in commercial dairy operations. These challenges can reduce learning effectiveness and impact milking consistency, milk quality, increase mastitis risk, and negatively affect worker safety. To address this challenge, this project aims to develop and evaluate bilingual and asynchronous online training modules that focus on learning needs of the dairy workforce. In collaboration with dairy system experts, health and safety professionals, and adult‑learning specialists, we will create accessible and engaging training focused on milking best practices, safety, and team building. We hypothesize that our training program will improve worker knowledge, occupational safety, milking performance, and job satisfaction. Project impacts will be assessed using worker‑level educational outcomes and farm‑level operational indicators of milking performance.

Importantly, this project is specifically designed to enhance workforce training by integrating concept-based learning that emphasizes the "why" behind best practices, rather than focusing solely on the "how" within bilingual educational modules. Instead of replacing the current operational protocols, our project builds upon and reinforces them. By strengthening the scientific and practical rationale behind daily tasks, the training we will develop intends to improve worker confidence, consistency in protocol implementation, and engagement with farm-level sustainability goals.

Research Objectives

Objective 1: To design bilingual (English and Spanish) online asynchronous training modules that enhance dairy workers' competency in milking management and safety practices.

Objective 2: To implement the training modules in commercial dairy farms and evaluate qualitative and quantitative changes in dairy worker knowledge, competencies, satisfaction, safety behaviors, and key milking‑system performance indicators resulting from the delivery of the bilingual training modules.

Educational Objective

Objective 3: To develop dissemination materials describing the construction, implementation, and results of the learner-centered bilingual training modules to increase dairy stakeholder understanding of how workforce education on best milking practices and safety through extension programming, and scholarly publications enhances milking performance, workplace safety, worker learning outcomes.