News

Supply chain issues and a tornado slowed dairy farm upgrade

A central Wisconsin dairy farm needed more time to make the change from stanchions to milking robots.

Dennis Roehl tells Brownfield there were supply chain issues that slowed the retrofitting of their free-stall barn and the installation of four robots. “We were supposed to be milking January 1st (in the new facility) We just started three weeks ago so it has been a long time coming here and we still don’t have all of the parts in the milkhouse that we still need yet.”

There were some delays when construction crews were diverted to repair other properties after a December tornado, but the Roehl’s say touring other farms and settling on a design took longer than the construction. Dennis says, “It wasn’t so much the construction people as it was the situations that they were in.” Susie says, “They did a wonderful job. We were hoping by January but we’re running with it and I think it’s going really well.”

And Susie Roehl says the main reason for the change was labor. “A lot of people, it’s not their thing anymore to do the manual labor I guess, so I think it will make it more consistent for the animals, too, and going through the robots, we don’t have to worry about someone not showing up for work that morning because the robots are there.”

The Roehl’s robotic milking system will be on display when they host Wisconsin’s Farm Technology Days starting July 12^th.