Robotic Dairy
Homestead Dairy prides ourselves on caring about our cows' comfort and health.
We, as Homestead Dairy, chose to implement 36 robots to help enhance the cow comfort at our dairy. This milking system allows the cows to choose when they get milked, when they eat, and when they lay on the memory foam beds. This system has very limited human interaction and allows the cows to make their own schedule. Above you can see how the system works.
Making it choice allows for complete cow comfort in the milking process.
Lely Luna - The Cow Massage Brush
Juno - The Feed Pusher
The Scraper - Cleans manure for the cow
Homestead is focused on making cows comfortable and the Luna brush allows the cows to get rubbed down anytime they want to. By putting pressure on the brush, it begins to spin and brushes the cows. There are two brushes in each pen and there still is always a line waiting for their massage.
Cows need to have access to feed 24 hours a day and to make sure this happens, we have invested in a Juno. Our cows average 100 pounds of feed per day. Juno pushes the feed forward every hour and makes sure that the cows can reach their nutritious feed as often as possible.
Keeping barns as clean as possible helps keep the cow comfort high. To make this happen, we put in the automated scraper, on a pully system, that pushes manure out of the pen every hour. The manure is then brought to a seperator that takes the liquids to a pit, ready to fertilize. It takes the solids to the press for bedding.
NEWS ARTICLES ON THE FARM!!
The farm has had many visitors over the years and we have given many tours!
Here are some articles that have been written about the farm.
Homestead Dairy Innovates with Technology-Driven Expansion Marshall County _ WTCA FM 106.pdfDairy near Plymouth gets tax break for robotic facility _ Business _ southbendtribune.pdfHomestead Dairy pioneers large-scale robotic milking.pdf