Instead of constructing a new building for our robotic milkers, we are redesigning the barns we already have to accommodate them. This is also called retrofitting.
The robotic milkers will go right in the freestall barns, but they are housed in “robot rooms,” two milkers per room. Each robot room is about the size of eight or nine of the freestall beds. We are adding on to one end of the barn so we aren’t losing any space at all, just moving the beds from one part of the barn to another, newer part of the barn.
Construction projects around the farm are always crazy, but this one is at a whole new level. There was one day when I couldn’t get into the driveway. There were probably 25 people here between the manure equipment company, the plumbers, the electrical company and the concrete trucks.
When we built the milking parlor, everything was happening in one place. There is one general collection area where the majority of the plumbing, electrical, water pipes, etc. are located. Because we’ll need several robot rooms, all of those things are way more spread out, and have to lead to a central location. Months of planning go into making sure everything will work out. All our due diligence really pays off during the construction.
This project is happening in phases. We’re starting with two to three robotic milkers that we hope to have up and running soon.
We’ll have a small group of cows – around 120 – that will be trained to use the robotic milkers instead of going to the milking parlor. It’ll be like a series of startups. We’ll start with two to three robotic milkers, then we’ll do five more, and then five more until we have thirteen total robotic milkers.