06/16/2023
My grandkids are heading up our petting zoo tomorrow at the breakfast. Check them out! 🥰
Come and meet our cows at the 37th Annual Dairy Breakfast on Saturday, June 17 from 7am-Noon at Four Cubs Farm - 23250 South Williams Road, Grantsburg, WI 54840
At Four Cubs Farm, nearly 1,000 Holstein cows milk themselves in 16 state-of-the-art robotic milking machines that are located throughout the barn where the cows live. Each cow wears a tracking device – like a FitBit – which tells the robot who she is and alerts us if she needs any special attention as it also monitors activity levels and cud chewing.
Cows want to go to the robots because we feed them a treat based on their milk production that keeps them occupied while being milked. Some like the treats so much they try to come to the robot up to 40 times a day, but the robot only lets them milk a certain number of times based on their production and stage of lactation.
Each cow spends an average of six minutes in the robot milking per visit and produces around 11 gallons of milk a day.
When the cow enters the robot, up to 180 points of data are downloaded. Some of which we use to determine the well being of the cow such as amount of time ruminating, activity, time eating which can indicate whether a cow needs personal attention or not.
