Robots free up time that was being spent on milking

ROBOTIC DAIRIES, from pg. 10 purchased a farm of his own and has been there ever since.

From 1995 until 2022, Rick, who does all of the milking solo, was up and down milking two times per day in a tie-stall barn. “I was thinking of quitting milking. My body was getting worn out. But at the last hour, I decided to put in a robot and keep going,” Heuer said.

His reason for putting in a robot is pointed, “If I milk until I’m 66, then want to quit, I can sell the robotics yet.”

Heuer installed one Lely A5 robot into his existing barn, which he retrofitted to house 60 cows. “I gutted the barn,” commented Rick. Only the shell of the building and the manure storage system remained the same.

At the start of the barn renovation, Rick added a new milk house and a maternity and calving pen with headlocks. He said he used the maternity pen for milking for two months while the rest of the barn was retrofitted and the robot was installed. “The [milking] cows were housed in the dry cow barn during that time. It was a long two months!” he laughed. “It was terrible!”

38 headlocks and 51 free stalls. “Obviously, they can’t all eat at once, but with a robotic barn, [the cows] are all doing something different anyway,” Rick stated. “With a parlor, that wouldn’t work; you would need more headlocks. But it’s working here.” tors are very accurate [for heat detection].”

He also installed water beds for cow comfort, which he grooms daily, adding dehydrated lime or sawdust. “I still have my exercise lot,” Rick said. That’s where the cows go while he grooms stalls; and even then, the cows have access to the robot.

In addition to adding the robotic milker, Heuer added a robotic manure vacuum. The manure vacuum runs slowly up and down the ally doing exactly what one would think: it vacuums the manure. It then empties itself into the manure pit.

In the retrofitted barn, Rick now has