Bill Daugherty rises at 3 a.m. to start milking 132 cows on the farm that has been in his family since 1876.
His 89-year-old father Martin joins in the morning milking at the double-4 herringbone parlor that was installed 50 years ago in a barn built in 1875. It was built to handle 50 cows.
“We get done about 8:30 with everything,” said Bill.
Farm hands include Kyle, 21 — representing the sixth generation of the family to work the 1,500-acre farm about 80 miles northeast of Columbus — a hired man, and four high school boys who help with milking in the evening.
Come March, if all goes according to schedule, the job of milking will be turned over to four robots awaiting installation at the center of a 360-by-132-foot barn that is under construction.
Bill declined to discuss the cost of the project, will also includes construction of three manure pits with a total capacity of eight million gallons, except to say that it cost “a lot.” He hopes to pay off the loans in 15 to 20 years.
“We’ve bought farms, but this is by far our largest investment in the future,” Bill said. “But we felt, for us to stay in the dairy industry, we needed to do something and needed to do something large enough that the next several generations could continue if we wanted to do it.”
He sees an advantage in getting robots to take over some of the work currently done by employees.
“They quit. And you have holidays and you have vacation. You have sick days. Robots will break down once in a while, but they don’t take any of those days off,” Bill said. “The robots don’t shut down except to wash.”
The Daughertys plan to learn to do as much maintenance as possible on the robots.
The cows, too, will need training. They’ll have to learn to use the robots, according to Glenn Carlisle of Carlisle Dairy + Forage Consulting, LLC, of Dover.
“Once they get used to the robot — the cows go into the robots freely — the robot cleans teats, stimulates milk flow, attaches the unit, and removes the unit when milk flow stops,” Carlisle said in an email message.
“They are fed a balanced dairy pelleted feed according to their milk production level. There is no holding pen where they wait their turn to be milked in groups (as) in a regular milking parlor.
“They get rewarded for entering the robotic milker by the feed system delivering a meal of pelleted feed to the cow according to their production.
“Without being moved and grouped together, the cows are really relaxed and able to focus on high milk production and long productive lives,” Carlisle said.
“We hope cows will milk, on an average, around three times a day,” Bill said.
“Cows that are just fresh have more milk and they want milked more often,” Caroline said.
“We’ll milk fresh cows three to five times a day,” Bill said. “Cows that are about to go dry, we’ll milk one or two times.”
Kyle is comfortable with the robots, the Astronaut A5 model from Netherlands-based manufacturer Lely. He is expected to take on more responsibility on the farm as his parents, Bill and Caroline, get older.
“They’ve been milking with robots in Europe since the ’90s,” said Kyle. “Robots are not new. This is this company’s fifth robot that they came out with. The old ones had bugs. They fixed the bugs and they just continued to update them.”
“We’ve heard a lot of good things about them, not many bad things at all, really,” said Kyle. who has a degree in dairy cow production and management from The Ohio State University Agricultural Technical Institute in Wooster.
“I’ve been around cows my whole life, and I’ve been a full-time employee for as long as I can remember,” Kyle said. “I’m looking forward to the future. This is something that I’ve wanted to do. This really gives us flexibility.”
Caroline hopes the robots will allow Kyle to have a good work-life balance. He’s planning to marry Samantha Priest in April and move to her Chili home.
“Getting married, I won’t be tied down here all the time,” said Kyle, seated in the kitchen of the family’s home. “I can go home and spend some time with my wife.”
Somewhere between 2% and 3% of the approximately 36,000 dairy farms in the U.S. use automated milking systems, according to Douglas J. Reinemann, professor of biological systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Most are on farms with fewer than 500 cows.
“The 20-year trend in the US is that the number of cows milked with robots has been doubling about every 3 to 4 years,” Reinemann said in an email. “It is likely to pick up because of the trend in larger farms adopting robots.
“That means that in 3 years we will have something like 5% of cows milked with robots and 10% in 6 years,” wrote Reinemann, who is the U.S. representative and chair of the International Dairy Federation’s working group on machine milking.
Bill Daugherty expects to see increased milk production due to the robotic milkers and the new barn, where the cows will be cooled by hilltop breezes, 40 fans and sprayed with water mist. He expects to have 240 cows milking when the upgrade and expansion is complete.
He’s had plenty of help with the project. The barn was largely designed by Kyle. Dr. Rick L. Daugherty (no relation) of the Sugarcreek Veterinary Clinic helped to pick the site. W.G. Dairy Supply, Inc., of Creston is the robot dealer and general contractor. Other contractors are MJ Excavating of Sugarcreek and Harold’s Equipment of Dundee.
Even with the robots, the Daughertys won’t run out of chores.
“We still have to feed the cows, breed the cows, keep the cows comfortable,” Bill said. “We have to do all the things that we’re doing now. It’s just we won’t have to milk five hours every morning. We won’t have to have high school boys milk four hours every night. That part’s taken care of, and continuously.”
Once the robots start working, Caroline hopes Bill can accompany her to Sunday school. He gets to services because he takes a nap after the morning milking.
“I’m ready to sleep in until 5,” said Bill, 56.
Source: dispatch.com
