World Ag Expo 2011
**The World Ag Expo**
I attended the World Ag Expo this year in Tulare, California. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, the World Ag Expo is the largest agricultural exposition in the world. Every year, anyone selling anything to farmers and dairymen exhibit their product lines and anything new they have developed for the New Year. People come from all over the world to attend the event. I seen an interesting statistic that said over 100,000 people attend each day.
**Awesome Loader Tractor**
Our family attends every year. This is our chance to talk with vendors, and find new ideas that could help benefit our dairy operation. Its fun to see all the new technology that’s available been developed noting that technology has progressed pretty rapidly in the dairy industry.
My dad is not one to be left behind of technological changes or even new ideas. He makes it mandatory for us to discover a few new things, and figure out if they would be useful on our operation. So what was the most exciting new thing I found at the World Ag Expo this year?
The Robotic Milking System
One of the main challenges dairies around the world are facing today, is finding employees to milk the cows. Milking cows is a job that is very labor intensive. DeLaval has developed the first robotic milking system that can work in today’s modern milk barn. The system is completely automated using new technology to attach each milking unit to the cows. The system even cleans the cows prior to attaching the machine.
While many of my dairy friends think that robots will never replace humans in the milk barn, I know that robotic technology will get fast enough. This technology is very new so it will still require continuous improvement before it will be economical enough to replace people in the milk barn, but it’s pretty cool to see this new technology actually working.
**The Robots Milking Cows**
Filed under: Dairy, Tech, Robotic Milking, Technology, World Ag Expo