Dr. Charles A Hjerpe Fellowship

Steve attended Michigan State University in the late 60’s to study mathematics, but took all the computer science courses in order to get free access to the campus computers.  He was given a BS and MS after promising to never disrupt a classroom in the computer lab again.

In 1976, he realized that there was no future in computers, and decided to prepare for a lucrative career in veterinary medicine.

He was granted a diploma in 1980, because of a similar, but much larger list of promises to his instructors: never to touch a scalpel, never to look in a microscope, never to talk to a client.

His employment outlook was dim. He decided he was down to two areas: dairy records analysis, and anesthesia.  He went to California for a few weeks, and met some large dairies with paper records.   But he returned to MSU, and completed a fellowship and residency in anesthesia and intensive care. During his residency, he continued his contact with a veterinary clinic in CA, who, for some reason, had decided to develop a software program to manage dairy herds.  After his residency, he was then offered a job at an expansion veterinary school that was desperate for a live body to put others to sleep.

He taught anesthesia and intensive care at Wisconsin for over 7 years, even becoming board certified, and a tenured professor.  But when his wife was offered a faculty job at Cornell, he decided retirement looked pretty attractive.  He quit a perfectly good job, and moved to New York.  He decided to go back to school, because he figured very few of his old faculty would have moved to the same location.  He studied epidemiology, economics, statistics, and dairy science.  In 1996, he decided to work full time with Valley Ag Software, the group that he had co-founded 1981 with Connor Jameson.

Since then, he has spent his time lecturing and consulting for dairy farms, DHIAs, veterinary meetings, milk equipment companies, semen companies, pharmaceutical firms, etc.  He has never been invited to the same location twice.  His primary role is director of research and development for Valley Ag Software, which sells software to dairies, consultants, and DHIA organizations.  According to a recent USDA survey, Dairy Comp now has over 60% of the US and North American market, and a growing share in other countries with commercial dairy farms.