“Hell Week” can mean different things to different people, whether it’s the time before and during final exams at a university, a difficult component of military training, or to dairy farmers switching to a robotic milking system, the first few days of introducing the milking herd to the robots.
Various family members took turns calming cows down as they made their first trip through the robots, including farm owner Jerry Zander. Photo by Jim Massey
Iowa County dairy farmers Jerry and Brad Zander were among the latest to survive the initiation earlier this month as they converted from a parlor system to a Lely robotic milking system. The Zanders and Lely company representatives said the conversion went about as well as could be expected, but as any farmer who has made the switch could attest, the first few days are a challenge.
“It’s a grind,” Brad said of the first few days of switching to the robotic system. “We heard the first three days are hell. Honestly, the lack of sleep is the toughest part. But the support team was awesome and the machines held up incredibly well. And the cows did better than we expected.”
Brad said he got about seven hours of sleep between Friday (July 14) at 5 a.m. and Sunday (July 16) at noon. His father, Jerry, said he had gotten about six hours of sleep from Friday morning until late afternoon on Monday.
“From what they tell me, this is going as well as possible,” Jerry said. “I told Brad last Thursday morning when we came out to milk the cows that this is the last day of our lives as we know it now. Everything’s going to be different.”
About 2,000 U.S. dairy farms have made the switch to robotic milking systems during the past decade. This country has lagged behind the rest of the world, where about 35,000 systems are in place, primarily in Europe and South America.
Farmers make the switch for different reasons, but one of the most consistent themes among farmers is the lack of available labor to milk the cows.
“My brother Jan asked me how long it will take to pay for this system in decreased labor,” Jerry said. “My response back to him was if you can’t find the labor to pay, but you still have all the work to do, how do you put a value on that labor?”
“It’s not a question of wage, it’s a question of finding anyone at all,” Brad said.
Jerry said finding employees has gotten especially difficult the last two years.
“We had excellent luck getting high school kids (to milk cows) until the last two years,” Jerry said. “The last two years I don’t know what happened but we can’t find people. I’ve had other farmers who knew we were switching to robots call me, asking if we had any milkers who could work for them. That’s how tight it is.”
The Zanders purchased their robotic system through Argall Dairy Systems in Belleville and Platteville. Company representatives were on the farm around the clock for the first 72 hours, and then returned in shorter time blocks for the rest of the first week.
“It’s like any new piece of equipment — when you start it up, you have to tighten a nut here and adjust a water line there,” Argall installation manager Jody Christen said.
The company officials also help dairy farmers calibrate the system properly and give them tips on what to do if something goes wrong.
Justin Segner, Lely system manager at Argall, said he had helped with the startup of robotic milkers for about 20,000 cows. Before helping the Zanders, he had just returned from helping a dairy farmer get a system up and running in the state of Oregon.
Justin’s son, Cory, 20, followed in his father’s footsteps and is the service manager at Argall Dairy.
“A lot of guys my age are out partying and doing other things, but this is something I really enjoy,” Cory said. “We build a special bond with the families we work with. They’re not just a customer to us, they’re family.”
The Zanders milked their 155 cows as usual early on the evening of July 14 before beginning to push the animals through the robots. The first time through the cows weren’t milked, but instead the robots recorded teat placements for each cow so when they were actually milked the machines would attach easily to the cows.
The third time through the robots the automatic brushes were used to wash each cow’s teats, and the machines finally began to extract milk from the herd.
“You have to stick to the process the entire time — you can’t deviate,” Brad said. “One thing Justin kept telling us is somebody is going to break, either the cows or the humans. You have to decide who that is. So far we’re winning.”
It wasn’t without a struggle. Many of the cows were jumpy the first couple times through the robots, and some kicked and showed their protest in other ways.
“This is one of the hardest first rounds we’ve had, but after that, it got easy really fast,” Christen said. “That’s due to the farmer having calm animals.”
Christen said much of the cow-contact machinery is made of carbon fiber and stainless steel, so it can withstand a beating from the animals.
“The first 12 hours were probably harder on the machines than the next couple of years will be,” he said.
Brad, 24, attended Iowa State University and majored in dairy science. It was always his intention to join his father back on the home farm.
Brad and his wife, Sidney, have a 4-month old daughter, Lily.
“If Brad wasn’t coming in (to the operation) I wouldn’t be doing it,” Jerry, 57, said of the investment in the robotic milking system. “There are other contributing factors. Some of our equipment was getting old and obsolete and we would have had to make a large investment. Plus of course the labor situation.”
“It was a huge decision — it was a long process to make that decision,” Brad said of the decision to invest in robots. “We’re financially conscious people; we hope we wouldn’t make a rash decision. We put a lot of time and research into it.”
Brad said they visited six or seven dairy farms that use robots, and none of the farmers were sorry they had made the conversion.
He said their biggest challenge will be developing their working relationship with the new farming system.
“We’re so used to how we worked together in the old system and now we have to redo the whole thing,” he said. “One of the things we want to do is make feeding the first thing that happens in the morning. We’ll probably move the schedule back some, but how much we’re not sure.”
Jerry was used to his alarm clock going off at 4:30 a.m. and operating on six hours of sleep or less.
Brad believes the new milking system will allow them to gain efficiencies in crop production that could help them improve feed quality.
“We’ll be able to be more flexible on when we take care of the cows, so we can stay out in the fields longer, make hay and silage faster, and get our corn in sooner,” he said. “I think that will definitely help.”
Zandairy Farms had a rolling herd average of 29,000 pounds before the conversion, so Brad said it’s hard to say where their production will go from here.
“Who knows what’s attainable?” he said. “We’ve always said we thought we were holding our cows back by only milking twice a day. Watching this system for three days now I really believe these machines milk cows better than any of us could. They’re so personalized and the cows are so comfortable.”
Christen said almost every robotic system he installs is improved from the previous model that is up and running on farms. The system he installed on the Zander farm is considered the fourth generation of Lely robots.
“Lely asks us (installers) if there is something you don’t like and we tell them, and if enough people say the same thing, they change it for us,” he said. “We’ve also learned stuff from our experiences on farms, so we change the way we do things.”
About 20 relatives, friends and neighbors took turns pushing cows and helping the Zanders get their robotic system up and running.
“A lot of people are interested in how it works,” Jerry said.
Source: The Country Today
