Dairy farmers, short on labor, are adopting the use of robotic milking stations that allow the cows to decide when it’s milking time, instead of the two or three mass sessions that have been common for decades, says the New York Times. Farmers say the machines allow more time for animal care. “Two European manufacturers, Lely and DeLaval, said they had installed hundreds more across the country,” says the Times. The No 1 dairy state, California, is a holdout. One California dairyman says the machines may not work as quickly as humans.
Mechanized milking stations have been around for a while although not in the numbers now seen. The Wire had a tongue-in-cheek item in 2010 about Lely’s Astronaut A4 station plotting with the cows to overthrow the farmer.
Politico writes about the return of good times for cow-calf ranchers, the operators whose brood herds are the starting point of the beef cattle industry. Feed prices are down, after hitting record highs in the ethanol boom, and market prices are up sharply. “(I)t’s a remarkable turnaround for a set of men and often women who seem to live forever on the edge, caught between hard winters, summer droughts and the Goliaths of the meat-packing industry,” says Pollitico.