Robotics in the milking parlors has also helped him reduce labor costs.
|
|
A cow and a milking machine – partial automation compared to hand milking A rotary milking parlor – higher efficiency compared to stationary milking parlors, but still requiring manual labour with milking machines etc.
|
|
One of the first milking parlors in the county was installed at Broadacre Farm in about 1950. The milking parlor and milk house are part of a complex of four adjoining buildings. The complex, with additions made through the 1990s, is integrated with the hay barn. The Adairs sold the Broadacre Farm to Peter Sinnema in 1945.
|
|
Mobile Milking Parlor from DeLaval Life on a dairy farm revolves around the milking parlor. Each lactating cow will visit the parlor at least twice a day to be milked. An incredible amount of engineering has gone into designing milking parlors and milking machines. Efficiency is crucial; every second saved while milking a single cow adds up to hours over the whole herd.
|
|
New machinery—especially large self-propelled combines and mechanical cotton pickers—sharply reduced labor requirements in harvesting. In addition, electric motors and irrigation pumps opened up new ways to be efficient. Electricity also played a role in making major innovations in animal husbandry possible, especially modern milking parlors, grain elevators, and CAFOs (confined animal-feeding operations). Advances in fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides and fungicides, the use of antibiotics and growth hormones.
|
|
Efficiency of four different milking parlors. Innovation in milking focused on mechanizing the milking parlor (known in Australia and New Zealand as a milking shed) to maximize the number of cows per operator which streamlined the milking process to permit cows to be milked as if on an assembly line, and to reduce physical stresses on the farmer by putting the cows on a platform slightly above the person milking the cows to eliminate having to constantly bend over. Many older and smaller farms still have tie-stall or stanchion barns, but worldwide a majority of commercial farms have parlors.
|
|
This cooling method worked well for smaller dairies, however was fairly inefficient and was unable to meet the increasingly higher cooling demand of larger milking parlors. In the mid-1950s direct expansion refrigeration was first applied directly to the bulk milk cooler. This type of cooling utilizes an evaporator built directly into the inner wall of the storage tank to remove heat from the milk. Direct expansion is able to cool milk at a much faster rate than early ice bank type coolers and is still the primary method for bulk tank cooling today on small to medium-sized operations.
|
|
Southwest of the Government Zone was the Food Zone, composed of 13 buildings in total (excluding the Turkey and Sweden exhibits, which were physically located within the Food Zone but considered part of the Government Zone). Its Focal Exhibit was Food No. 3, a rhomboidal structure with four shafts representing wheat stalks. Among the many unique exhibits was the Borden's exhibit, that featured 150 pedigreed cows (including the original Elsie) on a Rotolactor that allowed bathing them, drying them, and milking them in a highly mechanized way. While no such complete system ever became common in milk production, many of its features came into everyday use in today's rotary milking parlors.
|
|
Each milking parlor is surrounded by a set of 3 or 4 loafing barns housing 1,500 or 2,000 cattle. Some of the larger dairies have planned 10 or more series of loafing barns and milking parlors in this arrangement, so that the total operation may include as many as 15,000 or 20,000 cows. The milking process for these dairies is similar to a smaller dairy with a single milking parlor but repeated several times. The size and concentration of cattle creates major environmental issues associated with manure handling and disposal, which requires substantial areas of cropland (a ratio of 5 or 6 cows to the acre, or several thousand acres for dairies of this size) for manure spreading and dispersion, or several-acre methane digesters.
|
|