Robots arrive

On April 20th my life took a turn - hopefully for the better. 

I am a 5th Generation Dairy farmer.  Up to this day, I have never posted a facebook, tweet, snap.... or anything like those.  But, I always figured if this day actually arrived that I would start a blog to keep track of some of the events happening in my life dairying as we transition from a conventional dairy farm operation to an Automatic Milking System (AMS), commonly referred to as robotic milkers.

At 8 a.m. the semi pulled in with 3 robotic milkers on it.  I had seen my neighbor Tom unload his AMS a week earlier in a neighboring town.  I had been waiting anxiously since watching Tom unload his at his dairy. 

 

     I was actually very nervous unloading the robots.  My telehandler had broken & so I was using my Case IH mx120 with the bale forks on it.  It is not as easy to see, and one or two of the forks are bent.  These are the most expensive items I have ever unloaded.  All went pretty smooth unloading them.  I borrowed my Uncle Kimber's forklift and once the robots were on the ground moved them over and into place with the forklift.  It went well & the forklift was able to put them amazingly close to where they needed to go. 

It ended up being a very productive day as we got the robots off the trailer and moved into place in the flat barn where they go. 

Tomorrow I will give a brief history of the decision to make this big investment.