Meet The Neal Family

A true family affair. While Jody, Jayden and Zachary, co-founders of UdderWays, each have different interests when it comes to their role in the company, their roots all trace back to the family’s dairy farm in Albion, NY. The farm was established by Franklin Neal, Jody’s grandfather, in 1956 where he began milking just 16 cows. Over the years, and moving into its fourth generation, the farm has expanded to milking 600 cows.

The Neals are always looking for different ways to improve functionalities and technologies around the farm. When looking for a way to apply ozonated water as a dairy pre-dip, they found that the current tools on the market were not practical for application so they set out to make a tool that would work. The first prototype of the Vortex was created in 2018 after an attempt to try and control the water flow inside the tool. The Vortex tool brought along with it unintended benefits including stimulation, quicker and faster milk letdown, labor savings, a lightweight design, removal of the need for laundry machines due to the elimination of towels, and the elimination of cross contamination.

UdderWays was officially established in 2022 and the first market-ready Vortex prototype was completed the following year. 2024 was a year of vast change where the Neals upgraded the applicator handle from something that was being 3D printed and glued together in their garage to a more refined commercial product. In that same year, the control box also received an upgrade to include a custom PCB control board that allows access from a mobile app, data logging, and remote troubleshooting.

At the end of 2024, 12,000 cows were on the Vortex system. As of July 2025, that number was up to 30,640 cows on dairies across the United States. As the company continues to grow, the Neals have a goal to make the Vortex more accessible to dairy farmers across the country, as well as internationally.