Mason-Dixon Farm cuts ribbon on 10-robot milking facility

Mason-Dixon Farm, located just a few miles south of the famous Gettysburg Civil War battlefield, held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on a 500-cow, 10-robot milking facility Tuesday.

The new barn is the largest, single-site robotic installation in the world for DeLaval's Voluntary Milking System (VMS).

The Mason-Dixon facility is unique in a number of ways. Cows are housed in seven pens of varying sizes. Cows in four pens have access to one VMS unit, while cows in three of the larger pens have access to two units.

The site is already graded to handle three more 500-cow units, and tunnels that provide underground, "clean air" access to each of the existing and planned robot rooms are already in place. However, no definitive dates have been set for the next facilities.

Economics will play a key role in further expansion, says Doyle Waybright, main spokesman for the farm. "Before we do any future construction, we need to get a real strong handle on the economics," he says. Using a Penn State economic model prior to construction, Waybright calculates an eight- to 10-year payback on the entire system.

"That almost squelched the deal right there," he says. "On this farm, we want a payback on new technology in five years or less. But with something like this, you have to be willing to go further out."

The biggest savings with the system is labor. Waybrights estimate they're saving about 25 hours of milking labor per day on 487 cows milked by the VMS units, while spending two hours or less per day in system maintenance. "Labor will continue to be more and more difficult to come by" on dairy farms, says Doyle. And the cost of labor will only go up.

Look for complete coverage of the new facility in an upcoming issue of Dairy Today.