Understanding the right fit

PAYNESVILLE, Minn. — There are many considerations for dairy producers who want to upgrade to robotic milking units.

Carolina Pizón and Stephanie Plaster spoke about some of the factors to evaluate before robotic milking units are implemented. Along with others, they spoke about robots Feb. 26 during the “Milking Robots: Are they the future?” meeting at Shady’s 55 Pub & Event Center in Paynesville.

“We know technology is a big investment,” Pizón said. “Our goal is to help dairy producers prepare, and provide resources to help them make informed, strategic and economically viable decisions when considering transitioning to any sort of automation or technology.”

Pizón and Plaster both work for the University of Wisconsin–Extension. Pizón is the dairy outreach specialist and Plaster is the farm management, business development outreach specialist.

Pizón has been working on ways to help dairy producers make more informed decisions about robotic systems. She and her colleagues worked with several producers already using automatic milking systems to learn the good, the bad and the ugly.

To gather information, they started with farm interviews with those who have an automatic milking system. Based on the interviews, they put together considerations interested producers could use.

“What we wanted to know first was what motivates people to do the switch,” Pizón said.

When they talk to farmers, they heard that being able to ask questions and gather information from various producers has helped teach producers about robotic milking units.

Through interviews, Pizón and her coworkers wanted to know what producers have learned through their process, what benefits they found and what challenges they faced through adoption. They also wanted to get a better understanding of first-year challenges, advice they received from others, advice they would give others and plans for the future.

Pizón said they are still in the process of improving and making sure the information they have collected is useful to producers. However, they have been able to come up with important considerations for producers looking at implementing automation.

“The key to transition to automation is starting with the right questions,” Pizón said. “If you say, ‘Yes, I want to have robots on my farm,’ but you don’t even know what to ask, where to go or … what you’re missing.”

Pizón said there are nine categories to ponder when thinking about implementing robots: business goals, cost-benefit, infrastructure, connectivity, labor and training, support, adaptability, stakeholder management and production.

During the presentation, attendees were given time to complete a robotic milking unit adoption preparation wheel activity. Pizón said this can help figure out what and who producers need to know. The wheel which has five concentric circles is broken into nine quadrants, one for each category.

As producers are reviewing each category, they drew a dot in the respective inner circle where they felt their operation was positioned. If they felt confident that their operation was ready for robots in a specific category, they placed the dot in the outermost circle. Pizón said inner circles 1-3 mean producers may not be ready and need to work more on specific aspects before jumping into robots. The outermost circles 4-5 mean producers have a good understanding in the category. 

Once each category is ranked, producers drew a line connecting their dots to create their specific preparation readiness wheel. The goal is to eventually have the operation at a point where all categories are at a five for a full, symmetrical wheel.

“This is not to help you say, ‘Yes I am going to implement an automatic milking system or a robot,’” Plaster said. “This is to help smooth the transition.”

Along with gathering key considerations, some of the farms they worked with said user groups are helpful. Joining user groups through social media allows producers to see what a day in the life with robotic milking units would look like.

“As much peer-to-peer learning that you can do is one of the most helpful things,” Plaster said.

Pizón agreed.

“We all learn from each other,” Pizón said.