Integrating technology into the herd

TRAIL, Minn. — May 20, 2025, marked a new beginning for cousins Josh and Wyatt Vettleson when their robot barn became operational.

“(I like) the consistency,” Josh said. “If you want to change something, you can just do it yourself on the computer, and you’re not going to have to retrain 4-6 employees. Like the milking procedure, I change it on the computer in 30 seconds, and all the robots do what they’re supposed to do.”

The Vettlesons own and operate JW Vett Farm LLC, which was formerly known as Wayra Dairy when it was owned by Wyatt’s parents, Wayne and Debra.

The Vettlesons milking herd is split, with 465 cows being milked in the new robot barn and 70 cows still being milked in the original double-7 herringbone parlor setup.

When they made the upgrade, the Vettlesons installed eight Lely A5 robots, two Lely Vector feed pushers and six Lely Discovery manure collectors. Although the barn became operational in 2025, the planning and preparation process began in 2019 when they upgraded their lagoon and manure system to expand capacity.

“We’re still learning our roles and it’s more on-demand requirements,” Wyatt said. “If the robot goes down or the feeder calls, we’re over here more often, but it’s just more sporadic. If we plan on being gone, we can kind of bank the feed up and (prepare for that). We’re still learning that rhythm.”

Josh said the robots have changed their breeding program, as they are using activity monitoring for heat detection, rather than timed AI or synchronized shot programs.

Wyatt and Josh do a lot of the farm planning together, but they have also taken on different individual roles. Wyatt handles accounting, while Josh manages more of the cattle-related tasks like breeding, feeding and treatment protocols. They also get a lot of help from their herdsman, Mike Wollman.

The 300 foot by 260 foot robot barn is a cross-ventilated with dual-compartment water bed stalls. Inside are four pens with two robots in each pen — one left-handed robot and one right-handed robot. One of the pens is dedicated to cows in their first lactation., while the rest of the cows are mixed among the other pens.

“(In the summer,) the cows were cool and comfortable,” Wyatt said. “That was probably the biggest thing in (increasing) our production. It didn’t dip so much in the summer because it was so nice in there. They’re so much happier.”

The barn is also equipped with two bulk tanks, which allows their processor to obtain a full semi-load with each pickup at the robot barn.

The Vectors can mix 1,200 pounds of feed at a time and blend 11 batches a day. They travel around the barn pushing up feed and distributing more simultaneously.

The manure collectors bring the manure to an auger under the cement, going down the center of the barn. The manure will go into a day pit, which will then be pumped to the lagoon.

Before the completion of the robot barn, Josh and Wyatt were milking 420-450 cows in the parlor. As they were planning to expand the dairy, they started growing their herd from within and purchased some cows as well.

“We’ve been planning for that for probably longer than we should have,” Josh said. “It took longer to get the project going than we thought, so we were pretty overcrowded in our other facilities.”

The initial plan was to shut down the parlor once all the cows were transitioned to the new robot facility, but the Vettlesons have found that milking all fresh cows, heifers and sick cows in the parlor has been beneficial.

“It was kind of a last minute (decision),” Josh said. … “It is handy doing that work in the parlor.”

As the Vettlesons were planning their facility, they toured other dairy farms to get an idea of what they wanted to implement. They started planning the barn on paper in 2022 and began dirt work in the spring of 2024.

Josh said the construction company started pouring cement at the end of August and was able to pour all winter to keep the construction moving forward.

“We had to keep the whole barn heated to do that, of course,” Josh said. “So we had to buy some heaters and fill them with fuel every day. It kept everything going rather than waiting for the next year to start pouring again and start working. We kept everybody working all winter, which was nice.”

Start-up day consisted of the Vettlesons moving about 175 cows from the parlor and freestall to the robot barn. Each week thereafter, they brought about 25 more cows, splitting them between the four pens until all the cows were moved to the new facility.

“(The startup) actually went really well,” Josh said. … “We were like three days in and a lot of the cows were going on their own.”