Big dairy farms, with state-of-the-art milking parlors, robots and other technologies are kind of neat, but when it comes down it, dairy farming is pretty much dairy farming, it's still cows, it's still cleaning and hooking milking machines up their teats, feeding them, hauling manure, cleaning bedding pack, etc. I am actually a bit surprised which such a big operation they don't use more milking robots.
I don't think I've ever seen a dairy cow from a drone. The profiles of dairy cows from above, show that they're all business, not a lot of fat or muscle on dairy breeds.
And now you now you know what goes into making dairy calves ...
I had never seen a PTO-powered gen-set before. Obviously, it's a piece of equipment that makes a lot of sense for a dairy to have, as they already have big powerful tractors with PTOs to spin a gen-set -- and lost of grid power could lead to spoilage of a lot of expensive milk and a lot of hand-milking. Mike Price does a nice job explaining how the PTO-powered generators work, and the backup switch they use to switch the load over on the farm.
I was fascinated by the various milking machines in this video being demonstrated at the farm show. I guess they were more mechanical and robotic.
A good ol' tie stall barn ... there still pretty common in Upstate NY, especially in the hill country.