technology in dairy

A lot of you guys are older than me. I worked for one guy milking in surge buckets with straps over the cows back. You had to carry the milk to the Milkhouse that was about 20 feet from the barn. Corn silage was pitched out of the silo with a fork. He sold out 6 months after I started working for him as he had a high paying construction job. Lets list off all of the innovations that has changed the dairy industry and some first hand stories about when this changed occurred. Everything from the first time your grandparents or neighbor planted alfalfa and switched from grass to your first bulk tank. Or when your big tractor showed up. AI, milking machines, green chopping, rotational grazing E T, silo unloaders etc....Thanks, Bill

I started with surge bucket milker, and a flat top cooler. Now I milk with Boumatic auto-take off units that run on a track line in the barn.

I have several neighbours that have the lelly robot milkers, and the cows go to the milkers voluntarily. And one friend milking 170 cows in a 24 cow carousel.
Most farmers here store their corn silage and hay silage in bunkers or bags now. Hundreds of tower silos sit empty or have been knocked down.
I do 90% of my hay as wet wrapped silage bales. A very popular way of storing hay now.
There has been some folks going to grass fed milk production. Grass fed milk sells at a 10cents per litre premium, but the yield drag on production is brutal. You cannot feed corn silage, and are very limited in the amount of grain fed. Cows must graze daily for 120 days. Hard to say how long anyone will stay on this program.
My friend with the 24 cow carousel parlour also has a on farm artisan cheese plant. On farm milk processing and direct marketing is a popular trend, time will tell how well it works

When I was a kid dad had a silo unloader and bunk feeder. He had one floor bucket De Laval and three Surge belly strap units along with a flat top bulk tank. Both corn silage and haylage was made along with small square baled hay. Freestalls with manure loaded everyday to spread in the field. It's blowing with some snow today and remember riding with dad around 1970 on the 4010 to take the manure out to the field. Had a wrap around canvas cab which was called a heater cab here and what the Midwest guys call a Heat Hauser.

Between 0 and 6 yrs old our farm milked 24. The parlor (not really that) was a lean to on the side of a native wood pole barn.
The silage was fed from the silo with a galvanized basket slightly bigger than a bushel. The floor was concrete with a feed trough in front of wooden stanchions with over center latches on top. It was whitewashed every few years inside, and had a single cabinet for all medications and fly strips hanging every 6 feet. I didn't milk as a job, but did later when 12 or so briefly. The milking was done into open pails and poured into 6 and 10 gallon milk cans. All milking was done on one legged milking stools. these were hauled about 200 ft. on a platform milk cart with model TT wheels and tires. The milk house was the base of the windmill sporting both wind power (that was used often) and an Aermotor electric pump jack. well water was pumped into a concrete cooling tank in which was at floor level. The cooled milk was then hauled to the front yard for pickup to Gary Ind. All cows were named, the bull was only sworn at. Dairy rules changed in our area in 1955 and required changes that would be 3 years wages and never happen. Milk could be sold as before but at 50% of prior return, used for cheese and other non-grade A purposes. Good memories of difficult times and hard work. Jim

Bruce I was raised on a dairy farm Therefor I admire what you and the Mrs. do. We had a barn with aisle down the middle and gutters on both sides. Every day after school I got to drive the tractor and spreader thru the barn and scoop out the gutters with a 14 inch scoop shovel. I'm number eight of ten and the farm work was passed down from the oldest to the youngest. The problem was it skipped two older sister and Me and my younger brother got it 4 years earlier and had nobody to pass it to. I drove my first tractor at 7, rebuilt my first motor at 13, and at 15 I was the boss to bring in 6000 bales of hay during the summer. The city kids' could not wait for summer vacation. I could not wait for summer vacation to be over so I could quit making @#$%^%& HAY. That's way I Admire you guys I know how hard the work is.

What do you mean can't feed corn silage and 'must graze 120 days?? Legal or regulatory for assistance??????????????????????????
Dad milked 18,then 24,then 30 at a different farm
.I never got into the milking,I don't know why. No silo just ground feed and hay.Always Surge milkers and 8 gallon cans,then a built-on milkhouse and a bulk tankwhen the landlord added on 6 stalls in an ell.Next place he got a dump-in pipeline.The guy that bought it at Dad's sale offered it to me when he had his own sale.

We had Konde(sp?) milkers, sat on the floor. small parler with 8 stalls and homemade stancheons that locked at the top. Milk parlor was blocks of cement with 2 rooms. One to milk in and other with tubs to clean up. Milk was pured into a large tub with a pipe off it that went inot other side of the barn and over a cooler with water running in pipes. Milk then went into 10 gallon cans under cooler. there was a gizmo under the cooler so when one can got full it went into another. Cooler had water running through it. We fed silage from an old block silo, with a fork and there was a feed bunk below. As you empietied silo you took out doors. There was a metal tube over top part of ladder to get up silo. ladder was bars on the doors you removed as you went down. We also fed hay, early years was loose in the old barn. My dad and grampa got out of the dairy when you had to go big or get out. We put milk cans under a sprinkler in summer to keep them cold. We milked jersys so lots of cream on the milk.

He means to qualify for the 'grass fed' label you can't feed corn silage and have to graze at least 120 days.

When I was young my father worked on a dairy. The milk tank was across the yard from the barn. It was carried in buckets and poured into the bulk tank.

Vito

A bucket, stool, hand crank separator, wooden water tank to put cream cans in for a cooler. Moved up to an electric powered separator that only needed to be cranked until up to operating speed then the motor maintain operating speed.
Then an IHC vacuum pump and 2 free standing buckets. This system could be connected to the intake manifold of a tractor for a vacuum source when the power was out.

I didn't grow up on a farm but I pitched plenty of silage down with a fork, cleaned calf pens, carried buckets of milk to the bulk tank, and stacked thousands of bales of hay. My story however is about my cousin who until he was killed by an accident on his farm five years ago was six years older than me. In the early 1970s His father had moved the 60 milker farm across the river to Vermont into a new barn that could house 120 cattle. The milk house was a double eight. Huge increases in everything but tractors. The big horse on the farm was a 1957 Ford 860. During silo filling time that poor 860 pulled a single row chopper in first gear at full throttle hour after hour day after day week after week until the corn crop was all in. My cousin was taking more and more responsibility, and finances were such that my aunt and uncle were able to vacation in Florida for a month in the winter. While they were gone one year my cousin attended an auction and came home with a four year old Ford 5000. This tractor had nearly 50% more HP than the 860, but when my uncle got back home he was not happy. The 5000 was an extravagance that they didn't need. Come next fall however, the silo got filled in half the time that it took before, and I have a picture of my uncle sitting on that 5000 with the chopper behind it and a smile on his face.

When I was 16 -17 I pitched at least one load of manure and carried milk from 50 cows. When I left they installed a pipe line and gutter cleaner. It was good money. 50 cents an hour, 1967

grandpa bought our farm in 48 from his bil. in 52 dad started a dairy his older brother sold dairy equipment. dad bought a 500 gallon flat top bulk tank and 3 delaval bucket milkers. the big barn had 1/3 chickens 1/3 horses. this was remodeled into 5 rows of 7 cows. there were 2 silos a 14x40 and a 16x50. silage was hauled in a wheel barrow. after it was pitched out by hand. at this time hay was cut with horses and baled with a 77 nh baler. corn was picked with a mounted picker. and i belive grain was threshed. in 54 grandpa bought a IH 200 and fast hitch mower and a cunningham hay conditioner was purchased. corn was chopped and blown in the silo with a long hopper blower powered by the WD9 or the 460 on the belt. dads younger brother told me that they had to run the 460 for a few days with the ta back to get the carbon out. there were 2 wagons that were powered by an electric potable power rachet. and 1 hydraulic dump wagon. manure was pitched on the spreader by hand or a trip loader on the M.later on a 29 owatonna swather and 74 IH combine was purchesed. in 63 dad bought the farm from grandpa. about this time the chopping equipment was upgraded to a heavy duty gehl chopper 2 gehl self unloading wagons and a short hopper gehl blower and recutter to grind ear corn in the silo. in 64 dad put up a 16x60 silo. the old 77 baler was traded for a super 68 nh baler.also an 80 mccormick combine was purchased. in 66 dad built another 16x60 silo bought out his fil in 67 the barn was added onto hold 55 cows calves an barn cleaners were added there were 5 rows of cows so one row had to be pitched by hand. i was 11 at this time and i had been carrying milk at night with 10 quart pails with the bigger barn i couldnt keep up so a step saver was bought. also a feeding system and loafing barn was built. in 68 dad bought out his fil and he bought a 504 with a belly mower he got a JD crimper from his fil. around 71 we tried a haybine. and bought one the next year. he also bought a 275 NH baler and thrower and had 3 throw racks made. in 74 dad put in a pipeline. dad bought a 650 IH chopper and hay head and 2 910 gehl wagons. the M and 504 had been hauling out manure in the winter but with the extra cows dad had to get a 519 spreader and the 706 had to take over manure spreading. we had a windbreaker but dad never let us use it. in 76 he bought a 1086 we had some pretty brutal winters so then we used the 1086 in the winter. in 79 the barn cleaners were worn out so dad put in a manure pit and manure ram so hauling out in winter was over. in 90 dad got in a dairy partnership with a neighbor they were going to milk 200 head on different farms. in 96 i had to leave the dairy operation was mismanaged the equipment on dads place was always breaking down and the cows were being mistreated. the whole operation went out of business a year later dad died 2 years ago and left the farm to my brother and sister and was sold last fall.

My family bought a dairy farm in 69 in Wisconsin. It had a Universal vacuum pump and buckets. Milk was strained into cans that sat in a concrete tank with running water to keep them cool.
Dad updated the pump to a new DeLaval and the first time he fired it up he freaked out because it was so noisy compared to the Universal, he actually called the dealer and they explained that the noise was normal...
In 71 the milk company offered to finance a bulk tank so dad finally stopped using cans. We were the last farm to be using them....but 20 years later when the Amish started showing up the milk company was back to cans again....
In 72 the barn burned and we ended up buying a different farm rather than rebuilding. Dad put a stepsaver in that barn and man we were really living....
After dealing with heart problems and several moves we ended up on another farm in Wisconsin in 79 and it actually had a pipeline in it....Was a crappy older DeLaval with single shot pulsation and an underpowered vacuum pump but was still miles ahead of carrying buckets of milk to the milkhouse...

Spent several years of my adult life installing and maintaining milking equipment. Have upgraded a lot of guys from buckets to pipelines and even up to portable automatic take-offs. Put in 8000 gallon bulk tanks and several large parlors.....always amazed at where technology can take us...

As far as other farm equipment, the first farm we has had a poured concrete silo and an older one built of rock and concrete. Neither had an unloader so dad had to pitch all the silage out by hand. In the winter he also needed a pick to get chunk of the stuff off the walls. He would lean the chunks up against the barn wall in front of the cows so they could thaw before he fed them.
We filled them with old false endgate wagons and a long hopper blower that was operated by belt. We didn't have a powerful enough tractor to run it so we had to borrow a neighbors Farmall 15-30. Dad bought a couple bigger tractors and changed the blower to run on pto power the next year.
When the barn burned and we moved the new place had a 14x40 silo with a surface drive unloader in it. Dad built a 16x50 and put a Jamesway ring drive in that and it was much easier to unload.
When we moved to the place in 79 it had a 14x40 with a ring drive in it and dad built a 20x70 and put a ring drive in that. We had put some silage up in a neighbors old poured silo the year before we built the big silo and it was my job to take the Ford NAA and a trailer over there every day and fork out the silo and then fork it out of the trailer to the feed cart and feed the cows...I was really happy to see that big silo go up...But the second year we had it we put the corn silage up a bit wet and the unloader had a heck of a time unloading it so for 2 weeks every night when I came home from school I had to fork enough silage out of that big silo to feed 40 cows 3 times.
The big silo was the biggest that the dealer had ever sold and I remember he was really concerned about it falling over. He personally supervised the digging of the trench for the foundation, even shoveling a lot of it himself and made dad buy the automatic distributor for the Jamesway unloader rather than having just a silo chute that flipped.
We filled the silos with a brand new Badger blower and even with our biggest tractor which was a Case 800 it was sometimes iffy getting the forage up 70 feet. Seems I had to always be careful when unloading so as not to plug anything up.

Their is an dairy opperation west of Phoenix that milks twenty two thousand cows twice a day. They chop twelve semi loads of alfalfa each day year around for feed. Think about competeing with a operation like that.

In the 1940's our farm got serious about dairy To compliment raising hogs .Put in stall barn, Leach barn cleaner ,used Surge bucket milkers, dumped into strainer in cans in milk cart hauled to milk house and put in an IHC ice bank can cooler (that replaced the cold water tank). Pressure water system replaced overhead gravity water tank filled by windmill. Can milk hauler from cheese factory delivered whey for hogs at each pickup. fed hay some alfalfa) ground ear corn ,linseed meal,oats and corn silage ,and pasture May--October. In the 50's we had more cows,bulk milk cooler ,portable dumping station ,some chopped alfalfa hay silage and baled hay. In 60's got more cows , silo unloaders , outside bunk feeders from silos and eventually a milking parlor with free stall housing used along with tie stall barn .In 70's more cows , started using total mixed rations,with portable feed mixer, more high moisture shelled corn ,.80's-90's hired nutritionist to formulate rations . Used BST starting in 94 and soon were milking 3x. 2005 started pasture rotational grazing,no BST, and back to 2x milking. Sold Dairy cows in 2010. .