Barns & Equipment

Have you ever noticed that on some dairies, milking units are not as clean as on other dairies? Some of this may be related to how often they are cleaned, but there can be other factors at play as well.

Some of the most common questions I hear from clients are: How can my employees milk faster? Should I expand my parlor to milk more cows? How can I milk more cows when we can barely finish milking what we have?

From a green field site only a few years ago, to a forward-thinking facility today, every detail of MVP Dairy in Celina, Ohio, is centered on fostering both cows and people to reach their full potential for long-term, sustainable success.

With the recent pandemic paralyzing the world economy and affecting the majority of households, the threat of disease in the dairy industry has large potential in regard to animal housing.

Editor’s note: This article is the second in a four-part series about how an Oregon dairy farmer is making robots work on a grazing system. Read the first story "How we milk 3 times a day with robots for success".

Situation No. 1

Like most farmers, you keep old equipment around since it still has some useful life left in it. You applied this mindset last year when you bought your wife a new SUV and kept her old one with 300,000 miles on it as a “spare.”