Agri News introduces readers to the Hageman family in the article, “Robotic milkers work well for Decorah couple.”
The Hagemans began milking with two Lely Astronaut robotic milkers on September 20th and shared their robotic milking story at Northeast Iowa Community College’s recent Midwest Dairy School for Exploring Robotics at the Dairy Center at Calmar.
Agri News says, “Alan and Ruth Hageman have one regret about their robotic milking system and that is that they didn’t put it in sooner.”
Included below is an excerpt from the online article:
“Our time is more flexible,” Alan said. “It’s less stressful and all around easier.”
The Hagemans currently milk 107 cows, mostly Holsteins,, and by the beginning of the year will be milking 140.
“We were milking in a 57-stall tie-stall barn, and it was falling apart,” Ruth said.
Each milking required the labor of Alan and Ruth plus Scott, 18, and Carla, 16.
“Scott just graduated from high school and he wanted to milk and to do that we needed to expand,” Alan said. “There was no way we could expand in our current barn because there was no place to go. We thought about putting a parlor in the existing barn and putting up a free-stall barn beside it but that wasn’t going to work, either.”
The article goes on to say:
Ruth suggested robots, and Alan admits that at first he laughed.
“He didn’t take me seriously at all,” Ruth said.
After mulling it over for about a month, Alan decided maybe Ruth was right. About that time, they read a newspaper article about Doug Heintz and how satisfied he was with the robots he installed on his Caledonia dairy farm. Ruth is from Caledonia.
“He started to believe me,” Ruth said.
They toured a Kasson, Minn., farm that was milking with a robot.
“After we saw that, we said, ‘That’s what we’re doing,’ ” Alan said. “They didn’t have picture-perfect cows and the robot was working. Their cows were like our cows, and I figured if it milked those cows, it could milk our cows. It works.”
For the full article, we encourage you to visit Agri News’ website.
Photo courtesy of Agri News
