A Tale of Two Milkers.....

It's rare that when we take a bite of a delicious cheese or ice cream, we think about the amount of labor and time it takes for that product to reach our lips. Often enough, minds will wander to the idealized version of a happy cow traversing the pasture finding the best patches of grass to munch on without reflecting on the work timeline of how that milk got from udders to package.

As a longtime cheesemonger, I often think about how milk formed into my favorite dairy products is unseen labor that even I don't have the complete picture of because my time on farms is fleeting. I've seen every portion of cheesemaking and the formation of dairy products, but I have not lived the life required to wake up at dawn's first light day in and day out to head to the milking barn. The path from pasture to package is long, and milking is the daily slog of the winding path.

Twice a day, every day at the height of the season. From udder prep to milking and clean up, it takes 10 minutes per cow to move through a line on average. Andy Hatch from Uplands Cheese told me that they move through their 200 head herd in 90 minutes with two people working on them with another hour for setup and cleanup. That's an average of ten hours a day of labor needed just for milking. Even before the recent labor issues, finding people willing to work at odd times of the day was very difficult. The rural placement of farms also provides a barrier to finding reliable help milking.

Labor issues in mind, it's no surprise that companies with the means are turning to robotic milkers to alleviate the need for people willing to make such a time commitment.

I just got home after a week-long cheese-focused road trip from Seattle to San Francisco, where I made stops at producers I love. The way back proved to be the robotic milker edition with Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese and Rogue Creamery stops.

Rogue Creamery:

I have written about Rogue Creamery and their robotic milkers in the past, and you can find that post here.

Rogue Creamery has been in the robotic milk game since 2015, and they use the Delaval systems. They have two stalls named Charlie and Matilda. The cows walk into the system, and a laser finds the teat to clean and add the suction cups. The same ten-minute milking time requires zero human intervention, and the cows proceed as they deem necessary. It truly is a cow lead operation!

Here are the Rogue milkers in action:

Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese:

It's only been a couple of years that the milkers have been in action, but the benefits are starting to roll in. They now can milk more cows with less labor leading to a higher volume of milk. Choosing the Lely systems, Point Reyes added six stalls in 2019 and two more in 2021. Though they have fewer actual hands on the cows, they can pull up the cow's information at their fingertips. Every time a cow strolls into the box for milking, all its information is available. Things like the last time they milked, how much they produced, and their milk's fat and protein components. These specifics are significant for future breeding choices.

Here are two of the Point Reyes milkers in action:

With a price tag ranging in the few hundred thousand, robotic milkers are inaccessible for many farms out there, but many see it as an investment that quickly pays for itself in the long term. Happier cows produce higher quality milk, and not having to account for milking gives farmers more time with their families and other necessary aspects of the farm.

This avenue is growing fast in North America, and I think we will see even sharper rises in use over the next few years. Hopefully, that will drive prices down, making it more accessible to a larger group of farmers.

Have you seen robotic milkers in person? What are your thoughts about automating what was once such a hands-on process?