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We actually did about 2 years ago that’s why we haven’t made many videos.

Milking 80 cows we only fetch 1 time a day first thing in the morning and it might be 3 or 4 cows most of the time its either tail end cows or they have some sort of problem.

Sorry I missed your comment we had a crazy couple days you can email me at lindencreekdairyllc@gmail.com

We milk Holsteins and I want to incorporate cross breeding. What breeds do you use in your cross breeding rotation and how do you think they compare to your Holsteins in terms of production? Thanks again!

Hi nick I can answer any questions you have. 1. we went with delaval for 2 reasons one we wanted a guided flow system to reduce the need for pellet fed through the robots and 2 our dealer was very good. I would say the number one consideration for robots should be the dealer in your area. 2. as far as likes and dislikes I love the flexibility in our schedule if we need to get hay in or finish planting we don’t have to stop to milk. You also don’t have to stick to the same schedule every day. Dislikes would be cost to run each machine on average cost us $1200/month in maintenance/repairs your electric bill will go up and feed cost is 25% higher than a parlor due to the pellet. 3. We were milking 38 before the new barn. I was working off farm as a heavy equipment mechanic for around 5 years before I came back full time and my dad was getting ready to retire. We milked with 1 machine for a little over a year before we added the second one. And as far as your other question on cross breeds our best ones are Holstein/ jersey or Holstein/brown swiss. As far as production goes our top cow for milk production in 2019 was a Holstein/jersey cross. If you use good genetics they make very good cows they always breed back very easy and are way more hardy than a pure bred animal. I kinda got away from cross breeding the past couple years but recently started doing it again.

@@therobotdairyfarmer Thank you for sharing that information. It makes a big difference when you hear these things from other farmers. Good luck with everything moving forward!

Our free stall is 68x156 and we have 65 stalls.

We do allow visitors. You can look up linden creek dairy of Facebook or online to set something up.

We are very happy. Our cows are doing much better since the transition and the robots have been very reliable. It has also allowed us to make better quality forages since we do not have to stop planting or harvesting to go milk the cows. We also started bottling our own milk towards the end of last year which would not have been possible without the robots.

We run sand in our barn when we priced sawdust it was around $2300 for a load and we would need a load a month. I go through two tri axle loads of sand a month And it runs me right around $1200

We don’t have much trouble with cows turning around if we keep the stalls full of sand. I love the green stalls. The first six months we hated them we had cows turning around and laying way to far forward. Once we made some adjustments it’s been good ever since.

@@therobotdairyfarmer thanks for the reply. I like the idea of the green stalls but heard some farms didnt like them. We milk cows with robots in Eastern pa

@@jessebitler8956 ya if they’re not set up right they can be a nightmare I think the floating neck rail messes with people thinking they need to be at the same height as a normal neck rail.

That’s funny I’ve yet to kill one single dairy farm.

We’re feeding roughly 40lbs of dm in the tmr currently. We are very short on hay this year so we have to feed conservatively. Lbs of milk our herd average is 48lbs with a 5.2% fat and 3.5% protein. If we could feed more I’d say we’d be around 55lbs which is where we normally average. As far as cost the only thing we add to the tmr that we don’t grow is bagged mineral.

@@therobotdairyfarmer thanks for your andswer. You said that your are botteling your Milk, i did that 35years ago in Brittany France. But the Best saling incomes was selling farm made yogourt. We had 3 différentes sorts. It was fun and good price. Actually the Milk factory pay 335 €per metric tonne Of standard Milk. What is the price Over in Pennsylvania today ?

@@didierfertil6334 the pay price from the dairy that buys our excess is $20 per 100lbs. The milk we sell off the farm we get $5.50 a gallon. We plan to start making butter early next year and are currently in discussions with a cheese maker to start making cheese from our milk.

@@therobotdairyfarmer from my expérience making butter is a waist Of time you will make better profit just selling cream or even ice cream. But yogourt will be the cheapest to do and the most profitable. About chesse in the US, i dont know if People like real cheese like we do on France, first it's an other job an other sciences to make a Brie de Meaux, a camenbert or a tomme de Savoie. It take 3years to get à batchelor degré at Poligny cheese institut in the Jura.. Bye the way, do you know that we feed yogourt to calfs to avoid deareas. It's very efficient too.

We milk right around 80.

@@therobotdairyfarmer do u raise beef cattle

@@calebmanuel17 we breed a lot of our herd to angus. We do raise about 12 cross steers a year then I have a local buyer who buys the rest to raise on his farm.

We’re located sw of Pittsburgh pa

@@therobotdairyfarmer so your not as far away from me as I thought I am in maine

We milk around 80 cows.

@@therobotdairyfarmer only 80 I have always been told you need more to justify robots but that definitely has me think from my farm

@@mcleanfarmsryan3897 we were in a situation where we had to build a brand new facility. The barn we used to milk in was built in the 1800’s and couldn’t be expanded. We priced parlors and robots and they were close in price. We installed our first robot in 2018 and then I found a good deal on a used one and installed the second one in 2019. They definitely cost more to run than a parlor but it allows us to do everything ourselves without hired help. We recently started bottling milk in farm and we would not be able to do that without hiring someone without the robots.

@@mcleanfarmsryan3897 if your on Facebook you can follow us on there @ linden creek dairy we post a lot more to that page.

@@therobotdairyfarmer okay yeah I am in the spot where I am the only one in my family where I want to dairy farm so I was looking at options so I wasn’t absolutely burn out and a buddy is switch to robots and everyone he talked to said he needed more than 110 cows but it just me and him

We knew this spring we were going to be short on corn silage so we planted a short season corn to chop early.

Okay.

David Ouart thanks we have more made just trying to get them edited. I will be sure to do some more in-depth ones on the guided flow and our cow rations.

Thank you

Thank you we hope to pull through these low milk prices and farm for many more years to come!