The heifer facility at Elm Farms Inc. is a little over a year old, and Michelle Hasheider-Burianek loves it. She and her father, Norbert Hasheider, operate the third-generation dairy farm, which is home to 130 registered Holstein cows including seven scored Excellent in their robotic dairy setup.

Efficiency has become one of the most important factors in running any successful operation. When applied to agricultural applications like dairy farms, it comes down to balancing machine production and versatility. Regardless of size, every dairy business could benefit from evaluating areas where efficiency can be improved.

I was in Portland, Oregon, sometime in the 1980s at Jubitz Truck Stop. I had spent the night in the sleeper of my hay truck, and when I pushed the start button, I got less than a weak grunt from the system. I had recently refurbished the battery cables, and the truck had been starting with vigor. Four hundred miles from home was not a nice place to be with a vehicle that would not start.

While adoption of robotic milking systems on U.S. dairy farms has been slower than in parts of Europe and Canada, these systems are slowly but steadily gaining popularity across the U.S. Greater labor flexibility and decreased labor are often given by dairy farmers as reasons for adopting this technology.

Milking routines include milking procedures such as pre-dipping, forestripping and drying of the teats along with timing of milking unit attachment. The timing between these events is important if dairy operators want to maintain or improve milk quality and maximize cow throughput in their milking centers.

Advances in seed and precision-farming technologies are continuing to drive higher productivity and crop yields. Farmers are looking for any edge they can gain, and that’s especially true for dairy producers during times of lower milk prices.

Joel Harman took some welding classes at his local community college because when he’s not farming, he likes to build things. As with most farms, there’s quite a bit of repair work to do in the field with a portable welder – fixing grain bins, augers and such.

From conventional to robotic milking, we see really no significant differences in the freestall dimensions recommended for comfortable dairy cows. Over the past years, there have been changes in recommended stall length and width.