Robotic Milkers?

[FayeFarms]

Will they be adopted in North America? Will they be financially feasible as an alternative to herringbone, Parallel, or rotary milking parlors?
Can they be used in conjunction with a grazing operation, or will they be limited to use along with a custom built freestall housing barn?

[born2run]

There was an article awhile ago in the Agri-View about a father/son operation who uses robotic milkers. They don't run that big of a herd (110+ I believe) and love them. Only thing they did mention was that they ran higher SCC than was healthy, but not extremely high, believe it sat at about 245,000. I'd think that robotic milkers would work in a grazing setting...just would make a difference where you'd put the milkers?

[FayeFarms]

The operations I've read about all have specially floor planned freestall housing with a system of one-way gates. The cow goes into milking station, her number is read electronically, grain is dispensed, the robot washes and milks her, then opens gate for her to exit, and she can only go back to freestall area to get forages. Kind of a continuous loop. The theory is that a fresh cow would go thru more times a day, a tail ender might only go thru once a day, so one would think the SCC would be good.
My reservation about setting it up for grazing would be would cows walk 1/4 mile to get grain and be milked as often as they should?
I have read that there are a large number of Robotic Milking Farms operational in Europe now. What would be the socio-economic differences that would make them feasible there?
To milk a large herd would require massive investment in Robots and milking stations, so they probably don't look like a way to go for many of the large number herds in North America.

[Sarah317]

I've heard that people either really like or really dislike them. A man from France came to see our farm on a tour and he had 2 (I think) and seemed to like them. Apparently the cows are a little nervous about using them sometimes and the average amount of times/day they do is 2.6.

What I wonder about is how it could unclog a teat with mastitis? How would you know if it did?

There's a good video about them here.

[BoumaticDuck]

i dont know about everyone else but i am not really a fan of those robots. I mean don't you think people should kind of work of their farm? I mean I know people should automate equipment and such, but I personally think a "robot" is a little over the edge. Not to mention a machine can't compare to a human around the cows. Maybe i'm, crazy but thats my opinion.

[born2run]

You could argue, BD, that some employees are virtually robots. In the case of where I work, the employer doesn't ever milk, and, although there's some of us out there that really care, there are some that couldn't care less and are only there for the money. I don't see any difference between a robotic milker and a milker who wants to milk like he's possessed because he has something to do that evening. If you have a good herd manager supervising herd health and monitoring the records that come from robotic milking, I can see it would be better, and least more consistent, than human milkers. Just my two cents.