How dairy robots are changing work for cows and farmers

This is neat but definitely seems like something for tiny little dairy farms still. Like they quote 30-40 seconds in the article to hook a cow up to a milker with a robot, but a human can do it in 3-4 seconds and with a rotary milker they can milk near 5,000 cows 3x a day like that . That said it does usually take 3 or 4 people to run a rotary milker, 1 for udder cleaning, 1-2 for attaching milkers, and 1 for post-milk sanitizing. But of course the people working there are generally the most desperate of society because they get shit and pissed on all day and stink even after bathing, so only costs around $10 an hour.

Not saying im not hoping this all improves or that it is good as-is, but the reality is these robots are competing with bottom of the barrel wages from tweakers working at a breakneck pace with live and moving and variable animals so it isn't easy and still has a ways to go before most peoples milk production can be automated.

> it does usually take 3 or 4 people to run a rotary milker, 1 for udder cleaning, 1-2 for attaching milkers, and 1 for post-milk sanitizing. But of course the people working there are generally the most desperate of society because they get shit and pissed on all day and stink even after bathing, so only costs around $10 an hour.

Maybe things are very different in the US but in the systems I'm familiar with (UK, Ireland, New Zealand) rotary is usually done by 1 or 2 people, the work requires care and knowledge so they are generally paid well above minimum wage and are experienced agricultural workers, they generally dont get covered in piss and shit and they don't stink

Yeah, that's overstating it. I help milk about 60 cows every weekend, and while there's certainly manure involved, and sometimes you get some on you, I've never been "shit and pissed on all day." I wouldn't go straight from the milking parlor to a date without a shower and a change of clothes, but that's true of any physical labor.

It is a lot easier to stay clean when you are doing 60 cows rather than 4,500 cows on a rotary milker set 4 feet higher than you are.

Yeah I dunno, having seen rotaries in action and knowing a little about the hygiene and efficiency requirements of modern dairy farming, there are several things in your description that don't add up for me

Both Lely and DeLaval seems to have at least some customers with thousands of cows.

https://www.lelyna.com/us/farmer-stories/homestead-dairy-uti...

https://www.farmersjournal.ie/dairy/news/world-s-largest-rob...

I've never milked in a rotary parlor, but I have worked in a farm with a regular parlor, as well as the traditional stall barn. I was way cleaner milking ~200 cows in a parlor vs ~40-70 in a stall barn. Obviously, clean is a relative term here :)