Barns & Equipment

The auto wrap system is a mechanical operation, and if you understand how the process works, you can tackle repair jobs easier. Here’s how it functions.

Milk quality is affected by numerous factors, many of which we can control through appropriate management. One major area that encompasses many intertwined factors influencing milk quality is cow comfort, which is the focus of this article.

Everyone loves a bargain. No surprise there, but there can be many unpleasant surprises when purchasing equipment at auction. Being “surprised” by your recent barn find is never the object of the buyer’s affection, so let’s take a few minutes to talk about some common ways to reduce the stress or increase the success rate of bidding on that “new to you” piece of equipment.

The Martin family of Milky Way Dairy in New Paris, Indiana, robotically bed their freestall barn with sand.

What started as an idea for three brothers to combine their dairy herds and build a new facility has led to one of the most automated precision dairies in the country, with robotic milking, cow monitoring, sand-bedded flush system, flexible stalls and a robot that delivers sand bedding to the freestalls.

Belt-tracking issues have several causes. The most common belt-tracking problem I have seen stems from poor operating habits. During core formation, it is important to get hay under all the belts as soon as possible.