Dan Vander Heiden with DeLaval Dairy Systems tells Brownfield the most popular milking system five years ago is not where today’s farmers want to go. “Straightline parlors like we put in historically don’t come up in many conversations at all anymore.”
Vander Heiden says the labor shortage and the need for efficiency is driving the dairy producer’s decisions when upgrading. “Today when we go out and talk to a dairyman, we’re either talking robotics with automation or large rotaries with automation, but automation is the common factor.”
And with the down economy, he says more farmers are looking at their options now so they can pull the trigger on an upgrade when milk prices rebound. “What we spend most of our time doing now is looking at these possibilities, planning for these possibilities, so that when this cycle finally does turn, that we are ready to start to make some of these improvements.”