Robots Make Life Easier for Owners of Rural Chehalis Dairy

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It has been been five years since the Styger Family Dairy Farm in rural Chehalis received a major tech upgrade.

The nearly 100-year-old farm, which was started by Andy Styger’s grandfather, has two robots that milk the dairy cows. He and his wife, Linda, run the farm with their son, Shane Styger. Shane is transitioning into taking over the farm.

“In the old system, when you milked by hand, usually you milked twice a day — four o’clock in the morning, four o’clock in the afternoon,” Linda said. “Now, with this system, it’s a voluntary milking system, or VMS. The cows choose when they want to come to the machine.” 

The Stygers have two Lely Astronaut A4 robotic milking systems, but they simply refer to them as “the robots.” 

As each robot milks the cow, it collects data from her. It displays the cow’s information on a screen and saves that data. The Stygers record information such as the cow’s weight, the amount of milk she produces and her rumination.

“They’re a lot calmer than they were before,” Linda said. “We have one cow in here, she has a green band on her leg still, and that was a warning to anyone to touch her — she might try to kick you. She loves these machines because humans don’t touch her anymore.”

In addition to the cows’ improved moods, the Stygers schedules are much more flexible than they used to be.

“Before, we were always on a timely schedule,” Andy said. “You try to keep cows milked on a timely basis, they’re creatures of habit. So now we can make more family gatherings, because you have that flexibility.”

These days, Andy said he wakes up at a more reasonable time — 6 a.m.

“We went to Miss Lewis County Saturday night and we put our phones on silent,” Linda said. “We didn’t get a phone call, so we didn’t have to leave. But if there was an issue — say for some reason she (a cow) knocks the machine off, or the laser gets manure on it and it can’t read the placement — it will call us and notify us. Then you come and take care of the problem.”

Linda and Andy’s son, Shane, is a fourth-generation dairy farmer. The robots, and the flexibility they offer, were part of the reason he wanted to come back to the farm.

“It gives you a future,” Shane said. “Because the reality of it — I’m the youngest of three siblings and each of them had made a go at coming back, but it didn’t work for them for various reasons. I openly say the robots were the icing on the cake for me to come back. I always said I wanted to come back and farm, but this made the decision a lot easier — just the freedom and flexibility.”

Shane said as long as everything runs smoothly with the system, he can be gone for nine or 10 hours a day — something that wasn’t possible before the robots.

“I can pull up the barn on my phone and I can see everything that’s going on,” Shane said.

Linda said this technology and the flexibility it offers is something they have embraced.



“He’s working smarter, not harder, and we have no issue with that,” Linda said. “It’s evolving.”

Linda noted that 25 years ago, the robots were about $1 million each. Now, farmers can buy two for less than half of that. Both Linda and Andy said that the investment was worth it.

 

“People will comment about the expense,” Andy said. “They are quite expensive, but in agriculture if you look at grain farmers that use combines that cost more than robots, and things like that, a lot of this equipment is used a month, a year tops. A robot works seven days a week, 365 days a year. So if you compare that, it’s really not as expensive as it looks up front.”

The Stygers can focus more now on managing instead of doing physical work. Without the machines, they would have been putting in nine hours a day, just for milking.

“We still harvest all of the feed, we still raise all of the calves — it all takes time,” Linda said. “So you’re managing properties, you’re harvesting crops, managing 100 head of young stock ... We would have to have more employees if we didn’t have this system. There’s just not enough hours in the day to get it all done.”

Although it took the herd some time to adjust to the new system, they’re all used to it as this point.

“They say it takes three days, three weeks and three months,” Linda said. “So in three days, you hopefully have one to choose to go in on her own. In three weeks, you hopefully have 80 percent of the cows, and in three months, if you don’t have the whole herd going through, you better sell those two that choose not to go through.”

When the Stygers were considering purchasing the robots, they toured six farms in Canada in one afternoon. They asked other farmers about how the systems worked, their issues and if they would do it again. Since they have installed their own robots, other farmers have come from as far as Montana, Idaho and Utah to see the Stygers’ system.

“They’re interested, and your best source of information is someone that’s experienced it,” Andy said.

Linda said although they understand the system now, it was something they had to get comfortable with. Andy and Shane now maintain the machine and can fix mechanical malfunctions themselves.

“We were kind of intimidated when we first started this, but they’ve learned to maintain this equipment themselves,” Linda said. 

She also noted that both Andy and Shane are mechanically inclined. Shane compared the difficulty level of maintaining the system to that of working on a modern car.

“Even with issues we’ve had in the learning curve, it’s worked out very well for us,” Linda said. “You have to embrace technology.”