Dan Natzke was awarded with the prestigious Dean Strauss Leadership Award at the 2026 Professional Dairy Producers (PDP) Business Conference. Natzke owns and manages Wayside Dairy LLC near Greenleaf, with his son Jeremy Natzke, daughter Jenna Nonemacher and Jesse Dvorachek. Dan is married to his wife of 52 years, Barb Natzke.
Natzke’s ancestors came from Germany to the Greenleaf, area in 1863 and started the farm that now includes the fifth generation of the family. Natzke has been farming on his own since he was 17, when he and his brother, Bob, formed a partnership. The dairy grew from 80 cows in two stanchion barns to the current 2,000 cows in freestall barns and a parallel milking parlor. In 2001, a barn fire destroyed a milking parlor, feed center, shop and some barns, which led to cows being housed offsite for six weeks and a yearlong process to build the dairy’s current complex.
Natzke served two, three-year terms on the PDP board of directors from 1994 through 2000. He is also a member of the Farm Wisconsin Discovery Center board of directors. Furthermore, Natzke was recognized as a Wisconsin Master Agriculturist in 2018. He is a s a repeat winner of the CentralStar Cooperative’s ReproStar award. The award recognizes dairy producers who achieve exceptional reproductive efficiency.
Natzke’s Volunteerism
Active in Zion Lutheran Church of Wayside, he has served as church chairman and elder, serves currently on its outreach and mission committee, and has been school board chairman for both Zion Lutheran Elementary School and N.E.W. Lutheran High School in Green Bay. In 2005, Natzke participated in his first volunteer mission to the Dominican Republic. Since then, he has returned more than a dozen times to lead teams in building churches and schools, digging wells and delivering needed equipment.
The Dean Strauss Leadership Award was established by the PDP Board of Directors in 2021 in honor of Dean Strauss. He was a Wisconsin dairy farmer and industry leader who unexpectedly passed away in 2019 at the age of 48. The owner of Majestic Meadows Dairy, LLC, Strauss was active in a number of dairy organizations and leadership boards. This included PDP’s board, on which he served as president.
