From Stanchions to Robots, in One Year CAIN FARMS Opens the Barn

By Melissa Hart

In one of the most dramatic expansions in the industry in the space of just one year, Devin Cain and his dad, Larry, went from milking 65 Holsteins in a stanchion barn to milking 95 cows in two Lely A-5 robots.

Their multigenerational farm in Belmont, Ohio, was purchased by Devin’s grandfather when he left for the Korean War. Larry had to finish the paperwork to finalize the purchase. In 1981, they expanded the barn from 26 to 74 stanchions. Nearly three decades later, the Cains decided they would either sell the cows or install robots.

“I’ve been on dairy tours, and I’ve visited farms with robots, and I told Dad that if we do anything we are putting in robots. I didn’t want to put a parlor in because we didn’t have any extra help, and one day Dad said, ‘Let’s go look at a robot barn,’” Devin said.

While they could go up to 120 cows with two robots, they want to stay below that, “We will max out at 110 because other people with experience have told us that if you are completely maxed out and something goes wrong and you’re down for an hour, it takes a week to get caught back up, and we don’t want to experience that.”

Devin and Larry have always been on the farm. Larry stayed after high school and Devin came back after graduating from The Ohio State University Agricultural Technical Institute. Transitioning from a totally hands-on approach in a stanchion barn to hands-off with robots required an entirely different mindset. “It took a long time to get acclimated to it and not wanting to be out there messing with cows all the time.”

Because they were familiar with their own herd, Devin and Larry wanted to be the first ones to push the cows through the robots. “We began pushing cows on Monday and worked for 36 hours. Finally on Tuesday night, the technicians from Prengers told us to get some sleep and they would take over,” Devin recalled.

“On Wednesday evening, they took the gates down and within a week, they were acclimated and pretty much going through on their own.”

Without putting up any new buildings, the Cains were able to retrofit barns to create facilities that are a calm and quiet atmosphere for the herd. Pasture is available for the cows, providing it is suitable for grazing. “We have a Lely Grazeway at the end of the barn that allows the cows to go out or stay in. It’s a box that they walk into, it scans their tag, and if they’ve been milked, it will let them outside and if not, it will turn them back into the barn,” he explained.

The cows know where they want to be. “We were told that pasture wouldn’t work with robots, that they would all come back in at once and clog the whole process up. But in the fall, we temporarily fenced the whole farm off and let them graze. They can be almost a mile away from the robot, and they come back on their own to be milked.”

The barn ventilation lacks fans because there is always a breeze blowing through thanks to where it’s located on the farm. “The cows always have a breeze, and we don’t have any flies in the summer.”

Devin added, “We are the only ones in the state of Ohio with a Lely Vector, which is a feeding robot. We are the only ones in Ohio with a Lely Discovery, which is a manure robot, and we have a Lely Cosmic, which is a computerized feeder. And as far as I know, the only thing we do not have is the calf feeder. According to Lely, we are the most automated dairy farm in the world.”

The Lely Vector senses when it is time for a new feeding round. The mixing and feeding robot measures the feed height of a specific section to determine when the ration needs to be supplemented, so there continued on page 45