We're Hiring: Dairy Farm Manager
Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)
Employment Type: Full-Time
Experience Level: Mid-Level to Senior
Work Arrangement: Fully Remote
About Us
We are a globally focused agricultural organization committed to efficient, sustainable, and high-quality dairy production. Our operations emphasize animal welfare, milk quality, herd health, feed efficiency, biosecurity, environmental responsibility, and continuous operational improvement.
The Role
We are seeking an experienced Dairy Farm Manager to oversee the complete operation of a commercial dairy farm, including herd management, milk production, animal health, nutrition, breeding, calf and heifer management, farm staff, facilities, equipment, budgets, compliance, and operational performance.
The successful candidate will combine strong dairy-farming expertise with practical leadership, financial discipline, data analysis, and a commitment to animal welfare and milk quality.
Key Responsibilities
- Develop and implement comprehensive dairy farm operating and production plans.
- Manage daily herd operations to achieve milk production, quality, health, and profitability targets.
- Monitor herd size, production levels, lactation performance, body condition, and overall animal health.
- Oversee milking operations and ensure consistent compliance with hygiene and quality procedures.
- Monitor milk yield, composition, somatic cell counts, bacterial counts, and other quality indicators.
- Implement procedures to prevent milk contamination and maintain cold-chain integrity.
- Manage feeding programs, ration formulation, feed distribution, and feed-storage practices.
- Monitor feed quality, dry-matter intake, feed conversion, and nutritional performance.
- Work with nutritionists and veterinarians to optimize herd health and productivity.
- Oversee vaccination, disease prevention, parasite control, treatment, and veterinary-care programs.
- Establish and maintain effective herd biosecurity procedures.
- Monitor disease trends, mortality, illness, injuries, and treatment outcomes.
- Manage reproductive programs, heat detection, artificial insemination, pregnancy diagnosis, and calving schedules.
- Monitor conception rates, pregnancy rates, calving intervals, and reproductive efficiency.
- Oversee calf and heifer programs from birth through breeding and entry into the milking herd.
- Ensure proper colostrum management, calf nutrition, housing, hygiene, and health monitoring.
- Manage dry-cow programs, transition-cow management, and fresh-cow monitoring.
- Maintain high standards of animal welfare, humane handling, housing, ventilation, and comfort.
- Monitor barn conditions, stocking density, bedding, temperature, humidity, lighting, and ventilation.
- Ensure continuous availability of clean drinking water for all animals.
- Manage manure handling, storage, treatment, recycling, and disposal activities.
- Coordinate farm maintenance, machinery, milking equipment, cooling systems, water systems, and utilities.
- Implement preventive-maintenance programs to minimize equipment downtime.
- Manage farm employees, animal-care teams, milkers, technicians, contractors, and seasonal workers.
- Prepare staff schedules, assign responsibilities, and monitor workforce performance.
- Provide training on animal handling, milking hygiene, biosecurity, safety, and farm procedures.
- Manage farm budgets, operating expenses, labor costs, feed costs, veterinary expenses, and capital requirements.
- Forecast requirements for feed, veterinary products, bedding, equipment, fuel, and other supplies.
- Manage procurement activities and evaluate supplier quality, pricing, reliability, and service.
- Maintain accurate herd inventories, animal identification, health records, breeding records, and production data.
- Use farm-management systems and production data to monitor performance and identify improvement opportunities.
- Prepare daily, weekly, and monthly reports covering herd performance, milk production, health, reproduction, feed, costs, and operational issues.
- Investigate production losses, abnormal health results, equipment failures, and milk-quality issues.
- Develop contingency plans for disease outbreaks, extreme weather, feed shortages, power failures, and other emergencies.
- Ensure compliance with applicable dairy, veterinary, food-safety, animal-welfare, environmental, and workplace requirements.
- Support sustainability initiatives focused on water efficiency, energy use, manure management, emissions reduction, and resource optimization.
- Maintain strong relationships with veterinarians, nutritionists, laboratories, suppliers, milk processors, regulators, and agricultural partners.
- Lead continuous-improvement projects to increase milk yield, herd health, efficiency, quality, and profitability.
Key Performance Indicators
- Milk production per cow per day.
- Total milk production volume.
- Milk fat and protein performance.
- Somatic cell count and bacterial quality.
- Milk rejection and contamination rates.
- Feed conversion and feed cost per unit of milk.
- Dry-matter intake and ration efficiency.
- Herd mortality and morbidity rates.
- Mastitis incidence and treatment rates.
- Reproductive performance and conception rates.
- Pregnancy rate and calving interval.
- Calf survival and growth performance.
- Heifer growth and breeding performance.
- Cow body-condition performance.
- Animal welfare compliance.
- Biosecurity compliance.
- Veterinary treatment compliance.
- Labor productivity.
- Farm operating cost per unit of milk.
- Equipment uptime and maintenance performance.
- Water and energy efficiency.
- Manure-management performance.
- Regulatory and food-safety compliance.
- Employee safety performance.
- Budget adherence.
- Supplier performance.
- Continuous-improvement savings and productivity gains.
Ideal Candidate
The successful candidate should have substantial experience in dairy farm management, commercial milk production, herd management, animal husbandry, or agricultural operations, preferably within a modern intensive or large-scale dairy environment.
The candidate should demonstrate:
- Strong knowledge of dairy herd management and commercial milk production.
- Practical expertise in milking operations, hygiene, milk quality, and cooling systems.
- Understanding of dairy nutrition, ration management, feed efficiency, and transition-cow care.
- Experience managing reproduction, breeding, calving, calves, and heifers.
- Strong understanding of cattle health, disease prevention, vaccination, and biosecurity.
- Commitment to high animal-welfare and humane-handling standards.
- Experience leading farm teams and managing daily agricultural operations.
- Strong financial, budgeting, procurement, and resource-management capabilities.
- Ability to analyze herd, production, health, and financial data.
- Familiarity with dairy-management software, herd-monitoring systems, automated milking technologies, or precision-livestock tools.
- Strong understanding of food safety, environmental management, and agricultural regulations.
- Excellent communication and reporting skills in English.
- Strong organizational, problem-solving, and decision-making abilities.
- Ability to manage operational emergencies and changing production conditions.
- A practical, data-driven, safety-conscious, and continuous-improvement mindset.