How dairy robots are changing work for cows and farmers

For something like milk, which is produced by mammals to feed young ones, there's all kinds of biological connections between a relaxed, healthy, content animal and milk production. We are humans, it's not much different for us. So as far as milk production goes, the wellbeing of the cow lines up relatively well with productivity. A stressed, unhealthy animal isn't going produce all that well. Often the limitation isn't the disinterest in the wellbeing of the animal, but the capital and labor required to improve conditions.

Quality tech can actually improve animal welfare, as shifting costs from labor into capital makes quality of care improve.

Now, this doesn't always line up well in all kinds of animal husbandry, but you went and looked at one case where it does. The dark dairy you imagine would most likely lose money.

Farm kid here. While it's true that farmers have an incentive to keep their animals in good condition, that's not the only incentive toward profit, and the bottom line often results in a pretty stressed, unhealthy animal that's in good enough condition to keep producing. If you can save $X by providing a minimum feed ration and leaving the cows in the care of the cheapest, least-caring employees you can find, and that reduces your milk check by less than $X, that's what's going to happen in a lot of cases, especially the larger operations.

(Not unlike human employers who have an incentive to treat their employees well but often don't.)

Farm organizations like to say farmers have every reason to keep their livestock in the best condition, implying that they're frolicking on pasture in peak health, but that's not really true. A lot of times it means miserable condition on concrete or a freezing feedlot. Livestock animals, like humans, are resilient and can keep producing through some pretty terrible treatment. The only ways to combat that seem to be A) customers who actively seek out farms that practice good animal welfare practices, or B) reasonable animal welfare laws.

"A somatic cell count (SCC) is a cell count of somatic cells in a fluid specimen, usually milk. In dairying, the SCC is an indicator of the quality of milk—specifically, its low likeliness to contain harmful bacteria, and thus its high food safety."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_cell_count