Hello,  I'm Sarah Fessenden, the new Technical Support and Sales Specialist for the Forage and Soils Labs. I grew up in King Ferry, NY on a 600 head Holstein farm and graduated from Cornell with a degree in animal science and a focus in dairy nutrition. During my time at school, I traveled to Germany and Italy with the Dairy Science club to learn about the European dairy industry. I greatly valued the opportunity to learn about the international dairy industry. One example of technologies that we can adopt in our area and share with our neighbors was Germany's extensive water recycling and reclamation to minimize their water waste. I spent a semester studying abroad in Italy and was exposed to different aspects of the Italian Dairy industry including cheese, salami, and Prosciutto production. I also worked on a 1,000 cow dairy farm and in a cooperative. I spent two summers interning, the first with Zoetis in the Northeast and the second, on two 4,500 cow organic dairies in New Mexico. And if that wasn't enough fun, I also helped beta test version CNCPS 6.5 for AMTS. Following graduation, I accepted a position as a dairy nutritionist with Purina Mills in Wisconsin. In this position, I worked with a number of producers in Northern Wisconsin focusing on lactating cows and young stock with herd sizes ranging from 32 to 1,200 cows. I participated in several benchmarking studies with calves examining different growth rates depending upon feeding levels of milk replacer or pasteurized milk. I learned about the food industry and cheese making in the "cheese head" state with a cheese company associated with our feed mill. My time in Wisconsin was a great opportunity to learn about the dairy industry outside of the Northeast and the cooperative system.

I am eager to begin my career with Dairy One and glad to be back in New York close to family. I enjoy playing piano, traveling, swimming, and playing board games. My family no longer milks cows, so to stay out of trouble, we have hobby farm with beef cows. We own a few Jersey cows in Western New York and are building a cheese company that makes Italian cheese using Jersey milk.