What Wisconsin Farm Life Taught Me About Hard Work, Family, and Chickens

A Wisconsin farm childhood shaped my values — from hard work to caring for animals. These farm life lessons inspired our family to create the CluckDoc chicken health app.

Growing up in Wisconsin farm life, all of us kids worked the farm we grew up on. It didn’t matter if it was milking cows, cleaning the barn, field work, or cutting wood to keep the house warm through the winter. You also can’t forget putting square bales up in the hay mow. Anyone who’s done that knows it’s its own kind of workout.

There are hundreds of stories that can be told from the farm. But the best ones come from Christmas time.

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When Christmas came, we always had a huge Christmas tree and more presents than you could count. My father loved Christmas — it was his favorite time of year. He didn’t have much growing up, and he worked harder than any man I’ve ever known. Even with all the work on the farm, when us kids were in sports, he always managed to make it to our games.

We never went hungry either. We always had venison, eggs from our chickens, fresh milk out of the bulk tank, and fresh hamburger. Yes, we worked hard — but we had some great times. He taught us how to hunt, fish, plant crops, treat animals, what to feed them to keep them healthy, and so many other lifelong lessons that are meant to be told another day.

And that’s why I could bring the old and the new together — and develop CluckDoc.

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My wife and I were always trying to look things up online to get some idea of why our chickens were acting different or seemed a little off. Every time we’d have to open a browser, type in what we were searching for, then scroll through countless topics trying to find something that matched our chicken’s issue.

But with CluckDoc, you open the app and press a button — and everything is given to you right from a picture. No searching. No scrolling. Sometimes time matters when you have a sick animal.

Speaking of sick animals… that reminds me of one morning I’ll never forget.

My parents were gone on vacation with the rest of the family, and after morning milking I let the cows out. One cow couldn’t get up. She was bloated from gas — and if she stayed that way too long, she would die.

A road crew from the correctional facility was cutting wood along the road that day, so I ran down the driveway and asked if they could help me try to lift her. It was a great effort, but we were trying to move nearly 2,000 pounds of cow off the floor… it wasn’t happening.

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I had to act fast. I grabbed a buck knife from the window, slammed it between her ribs, and gas shot out. The guys from the crew left suddenly and looked a little pale, lol. But the good news? I patched up the hole a couple minutes later, and she stood up and walked out of the barn to join the rest of the herd.

That’s Wisconsin farm life. Hard decisions, quick thinking, and doing whatever it takes to take care of your animals.

And that’s why CluckDoc exists — to make caring for your flock easier, faster, and a little less stressful. The values I learned growing up in Wisconsin farm life — responsibility, urgency, compassion, and doing what needs to be done — are the same values behind this app.

From the hay mow to Christmas in the farmhouse, from a bloated cow to the chickens in our backyard… every part of that life built the foundation for CluckDoc.

And I’m proud that our family’s story lives on in it.Writer: Tom Mante — backyard chicken keeper & co-founder of CluckDoc❤️🐔

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