From our side of the fence

Suzie Benoit

Stitzer, Wisconsin

Grant County

500 cows

What kind of barn cameras do you have? We have eight Reolink cameras that are all connected to Wi-Fi. We installed them about five years ago.

Where are they located? I have two over my maternity pen, one of which pivots. I also have two over my pre-fresh stalls. The rest of the cameras are in our parlor, office, milk house and freestall barn.

How do you access the footage? With our cameras, we can either monitor from the office or through the app on my phone. We also have it on our computer, and we can pull it up through that from anywhere. I check the feeds every night. We do a lot of in-vitro fertilization work, so if I know I have some cows close, I will check more often. I probably check 3-5 times a day, sometimes more.

Why did you invest in this technology? We don’t have a night herdsman or someone other than our milkers, and the pre-fresh is separate from the main parlor. It gave us the opportunity that, when it's 20 below in Wisconsin, I don’t have to put on all my stuff to go outside. I can take a look at the cameras. There have been times when I have been away from the farm and will check. I can then call and ask someone to go check the calving pen. Sometimes, we’ll get a call at night, and I can pull up the cameras in the holding pen or in the free stalls and maybe get a better idea of what’s going on before going outside. It also helps from a security standpoint.

What are the benefits and challenges of using cameras? The cameras allow me to view a point in time or replay what’s been happening. With the movement of the cows, I’m not getting alerts, but when it’s cold or the middle of the night, I can view it and make sure everyone is good. Or, I can see if there’s a potential problem and get out there and assist.

Tell us about your farm. We milk 500 cows, primarily Holsteins, but have all dairy breeds as well. It’s a family operation; we farm with my husband’s parents, and his nephews also work with us here. We grow all our crops. We also exhibit at World Dairy Expo and have been named a premier breeder of the Milking Shorthorn show a few times.

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Joel

Middendorf

Melrose,

Minnesota

Stearns County

130 cows

What kind of barn cameras do you have? We got our cameras from CES, but I am not sure of the specific brand we have. We have six in the robot barn and two in the bedding pack barn where the cows calve.

Where are they located? They are all placed on the ceiling and face toward the pens. In the robot barn, we have one pointed toward each of the finger gates to make sure nothing happens with those and we have one pointed toward each of the two separation gates in case something would happen there. We also have one on the footbaths and the last one on the separation pen.

How do you access the footage? The footage is hooked up to our computer as well as my phone. I usually watch it on my phone. I usually check it during the night. The robots will tell when some-thing is wrong or if they sit empty for long enough. Having the cameras allows me to quickly check what is actually going on without having to go up there every time I get an alert from the robots.

Why did you invest in this technology? I invested in the cameras to have more eyes on the farm. They allow me to check on the barn whether I am at the farm or not. If we take time away from the farm to visit family, I can keep an eye on the barn and talk anybody through what needs to be done.

What are the benefits and challenges of using cameras? Being able to see everything. Whether there is a cow down, keeping an eye on waterers or even a broken pipe, I can see it maybe a little faster and get up there to fix it. I am not really computer savvy, so whenever we have an upgrade or the power goes off, I am not good at getting them started back up again. Other than that, I don’t see a negative side to them at all

Tell us about your farm. I farm with my wife, Julie. We farm 670 acres and grow about 290 acres of corn, 200 acres of soybeans, 40 acres of oats and 140 acres of alfalfa. We have a guided flow system with two robots. We have three sons who are interested in coming back to the farm — Gentry, Jessie and Jordan.

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Seth Snodgrass

Orchard,

Nebraska

Antelope

County

700 cows

What kind of barn cameras do you have? We have Lorex cameras. We have 10 at the farm site and 10-15 at the milk site. We installed them over five years ago.

Where are they located? We have three with our storage unit, where we store our equipment — one inside and two outside. We have one in the shop where we work on equipment and four on the outside. We have two where the cattle calve and  a couple near the entrance of the farm. At the milk site, we have two in the feed lane, two near the crossover alley, one on the back side of the holding pen, two in the parlor, one in the office, one in the milk tank room and one in the compressor and vacuum pump room.

How do you access the footage? We have streaming boxes with a TV and can access footage with our phones and iPad.

Why did you invest in this technology? We installed them when some neighboring farms had some theft going on. We initially installed them on our farm to prevent theft. We also have them to keep an eye on things. We like having them near our freshening pens so we do not have to go out there and disturb cattle. Cows can relax and have their calves.

What are the benefits and challenges of using cameras? You can watch the farm without being there. In addition, if something goes missing, you can start with the camera’s video feed. The challenges are that, when they go down or don’t work, you must have a technician come out and work on them.

Tell us about your farm. I farm here with my grandfather, Warren Snodgrass; my uncle, Roy; and my brother, Heath. Heath and I are the fifth generation of Snodgrasses on this farm. We have around 15 full-time employees. Seven or eight are milkers, and the others help with farm work. We milk our cows in a double-24 rapid-release parlor. We farm 3,000 acres, planting corn, soybeans and alfalfa. We also use rye as a cover crop.

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Patty Sellen

Valley Line Dairy LLC

Oconto Falls, Wisconsin

Oconto County

1,000 cows

What kind of barn cameras do you have? In 2009 we installed two cameras over the maternity pens. Today, we utilize a local information technology company for the 62 cameras we have in three locations.

Where are they located? The objective is to view cow movement from pens to holding area, parlor activity, milkhouse, calving pens, utility rooms, parking lots, milking robot rooms and the care of the youngstock.

How do you access the footage? Footage can be accessed on the computer and through the cellphone. Video playback happens daily for various reasons. We can solve problems that did not have an eyewitness. For example, the robot facility is eight miles away, and the cameras have allowed remote viewing into the robot rooms while simultaneously working online to fix an alarm, thus saving us the 15-minute drive to fix something simple. The parlor also has a live video feed of the maternity area, giving the employees a way to watch for calving behavior.

Why did you invest in this technology? The cameras started as a way to watch for midnight calvings in 2009, when the farm was milking only 300 cows. As the farm grew, there was always a need for another camera. The video footage has created employee training opportunities, holds staff accountable, aids in diagnosing equipment repair — like figuring out “How in the world did that happen?” — and other things that happen on the farm.

What are the benefits and challenges of using cameras? The biggest benefit is having proof that an event happened. The video recording might be used to train staff on how to handle a situation more effectively next time, or it is documentation of an employee’s work performance to either reward or take disciplinary actions. The recordings give us a sense of peace. You never know when a large pickup truck will come crashing into your freestall barn at 5:55 p.m. on a Tuesday night, hurting no one but causing significant damage to the barn. You now have evidentiary proof. The challenge with cameras for us personally is the time spent viewing camera footage, but the benefits of having that coverage is worth the time to investigate.

Tell us about your farm. My husband, Troy, and I farm with his parents, Jeff and Brenda Sellen. The main farm has a double-8 herringbone parlor. Our staff includes 13 employees. Heifers are raised in Nebraska. Youngstock 5 months and younger are onsite. Far-off dry cows are housed at my parents’ farm. Recently, we added the second dairy that has four DeLaval VMS Classics and houses 220 cows. Today, we milk 1,000 Holstein cows and farm 2,300 tillable acres.

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Ben Jones

Trillium Hill Farm

Berlin, Wisconsin

Green Lake County

5,000 cows

What kind of barn cameras do you have? We have Arlo cameras. There are 40-50 total cameras on the farm. The first ones went in four years ago, and more recently, we linked all of them with our programmable logic controller.

Where are they located? We have cameras all over the farm. You don’t really enter Trillium without being on camera. There are cameras in every freestall barn, the calf barn, milking parlor, holding area, drovers lanes, manure rooms, chemical room, medicine room, sand separation system room, milkhouse, employee break room, commodity shed, and all around the digester. If there is ever any issue in any of the rooms surrounding the digester, we know it before having to send personnel there. Being able to view areas of the farm from a distance is a safety factor, especially when dealing with the digester and its associated gases. We also have a camera mounted on the crowd gate so that if a cow slips, the gate does not keep pushing. The camera moves with the crowd gate, so you don’t have to look at things from afar. We can see the entirety of the holding area. It’s important to have every angle on camera for training employees and making them more efficient. Every guy in the rotary parlor is on camera.

How do you access the footage? Everything is livestreamed to my phone and my brother’s phone. I only view footage if necessary. I’m not staring at it all the time.

Why did you invest in this technology? We invested in cameras to increase the efficiency of our personnel, thereby maximizing efficiency on the farm.

What are the benefits and challenges of using cameras? I view cameras as an additional management tool and another set of eyes on the farm. They allow us to check on the efficiency of employees, monitor cow health events, ensure the correct and safe operation of equipment and more. The cameras hold people accountable and can isolate discrepancies in job performance, deliveries, etc. We can also use the footage to train employees on the correct and incorrect ways to perform certain tasks. Cameras also provide flexibility for when deliveries are made. A delivery can arrive at the discretion of the driver, and I can verify the person is following appropriate protocols without having to stand there, which is a huge asset if you value your time. In the manure rooms, cameras enable me to turn on a pump remotely by adding that visual aspect to the programmable logic controller, so I know when nobody is in the room and it is safe to turn back on. The only challenge with cameras is that you have to learn more technology.

Tell us about your farm. My brother, Mike, and I farm with our parents, David and Julie Jones. We milk 5,000 cows in a 100-cow rotary parlor and ship our milk to Wisconsin Dairy State Cheese Company. We average 104 pounds of milk per cow with a 90,000 somatic cell count.  We have a Stjernholm sand separator system that reclaims 99% of our sand bedding.

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Shelly and Dan Mullikin (pictured with their grandchildren, Tucker (left) and Evalynn)

Waldo, Wisconsin

Sheboygan County

500 cows

What kind of barn cameras do you have? We have Axis cameras. Currently, we have six cameras we installed when we built our new barn in August 2023.

Where are they located? We have one camera in each pen of two robots, and we have four pens. Also, we have two cameras in our pre-fresh pen.

How do you access the footage? Our cameras are on Wi-Fi, and we can access them from our phones and computers. We monitor the cameras frequently, especially for cows in the pre-fresh pens. During the cold months, someone will check them approximately every two hours. It saves us from having someone there to monitor calvings during the night. We can check cameras from our homes and take care of calves promptly after they are born. We can also review the footage if we have more than one calf to determine who had which calf.

Why did you invest in this technology? We invested in this technology to reduce labor.

What are the benefits and challenges of using cameras? With robots, we do not always have someone in the barn, especially during the night and on Sundays. With the cameras, we can watch how things are working without running to the barn. They are very convenient when we get “calls” from the robots. We can check the cameras and determine if a cow is just standing in the robot and not leaving. Sometimes, the cows or people will close the gate to the robot. With some cameras, like ours, you can zoom in to see what is happening. The zoom-in feature is very nice, especially with calving.

Tell us about your farm. Our farm consists of Shelly and me and our three adult children: Cody and his wife, Katie, and their children, Evalynn and Tucker; Jess and her husband, Dylan, and their son, Christian; and Brett and his wife, Brittany. We also have two other part-time employees, plus some seasonal help with fieldwork. Our milking herd is housed in a 120- by 500-foot tunnel-ventilated barn, built in 2023, with eight Lely A5 robots. We milk 500 Holstein cows, and our milk is shipped to Cedar Valley Cheese (they make the best string cheese). We currently farm approximately 1,200 acres, growing corn, soybeans, winter wheat and alfalfa.

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Kaitlyn and Bobby Hefter (pictured with their children (front,  from left) Emmett, Quinn and Colt (back) Stetson and Naomi held by Kaitlyn)

Brownsville, Wisconsin

Dodge County

80 cows

What kind of barn cameras do you have? We use the Riverwind Barn Camera System. We started with one camera 10 years ago, and a few years later, we added another.

Where are they located? We have both cameras in our calving pen.

How do you access the footage? We started viewing the camera on the TV in our bedroom. We have since upgraded our equipment, and we are now able to view footage on the computer, TV and an app on our phones. We view it as often as needed. If we have a cow we know is going to calve, we will leave it up on our phones at night and check periodically throughout the night.

Why did you invest in this technology? We got tired of having to wake up in the middle of the night — especially in winter — to run out to the barn and see what's going on. Bobby often had issues falling back to sleep after checking on a cow.

What are the benefits and challenges of using cameras? We are more likely to check cows with this system. The ease of use, coupled with the fact that we don't have to get out of bed, change clothes and check cows, is a big benefit. We've saved countless animals by being able to have eyes on them when needed. One animal saved pays for this system. We can attend events and holidays without the worries of racing home because of a laboring cow. It’s great to be able to leave the farm and still have an eye on things. Challenge-wise, there is not much, unless the camera gets dusty and dirty or the cows sometimes figure out how to keep their backside off camera.

Tell us about your farm. We farm with Bobby's dad and our five kiddos in tow. When we took over, we had stanchions that we converted to headlocks, milking the cows from behind. We have freestall housing for the cows, and we ship our milk to BelGioioso Cheese. We farm about 400 acres.