The Moos Room™

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Dr. Joe Armstrong: Hey, everybody, it's Dr. Joe Armstrong. You're listening to The Moos Room. Thanks for being here this week. If you haven't listened to last week's episode, I suggest you do that. This is a two-part one. You're going to understand a lot more about what's going on in this episode if you listen to last week. We are jumping back into our conversation with Lisa Groetsch from Groetsch Dairy, and we're talking about robots, we're talking about sensors, we're talking about all the things that happen at Groetsch Dairy that make them successful. Again, thanks for listening, everybody. Let's get to it.
One of the things I've heard about and then there's even been studies on it, we talk about before robots and after robots looking at did labor actually decrease. Which we know is not true, right?
Lisa Groetsch: Right.
Dr. Joe: There are some benefits, right? The thing that I consistently hear is that while you have probably the same amount of labor, it's a little different, but what you gain is flexibility, which is something that's foreign to anything in the dairy industry. Usually, it's, I got a milk here and here and it doesn't matter what's going on, I got to be home. Have you seen that change things on the farm, that flexibility?
Lisa: Absolutely. I know that is one of the top two things Steve and I would both mention. If you ask him and you ask myself what's the best thing that's come out of this? Flexibility will be the first or second answer out of both of our mouths. We've really tried to cross-train all of our people so that we all know things happen. Whether it's a family tragedy, something, something. You have two people trained on calves, you have two people trained here, so something happens to one person or the other, but that also helps in the flexibility of life.
Somebody needs a little bit longer vacation. Somebody else has a school event that happens and they're out of town for a few days, or we just sent our son and my nephew down to Iowa to a conference. To have that flexibility to still get the work done and it might be a little inconvenient for one person to do a job and a half versus just their own normal job. The same is true then when they need time off. The flexibility is amazing and Steve and I have been able to take off and do things that we weren't able to do as easily because your labor is different.
They're very precisely trained and they're very precisely placed and yes, I'm much better with SOPs and some of the other stuff that you just didn't have time for in the parlor. You were just busy five hours here milking and six hours there for this.
Dr. Joe: Traditionally, dairy schedule is very unforgiving. When something goes wrong, man, it might not affect just that day. It might affect two, three, four days, weeks even sometimes if something goes bad enough. Obviously, that can still happen. I'm not saying it doesn't happen with robots but I feel like when you have that flexibility, it's also a more forgiving day. You've got time to put your head down and deal with some of these other things because you're not spending time in the parlor physically milking or pushing up feed because I know you guys have a robot that pushes feed up as well.
That's a huge piece that we probably don't talk about enough and while I think it's really well established that labor doesn't change, these kind of things are huge for mental health, trying to manage all these different things that dairy farmers deal with every day.
Lisa: Correct. There's a lot of things that can go wrong in a hurry. Obviously, when you have that many animals and you have facilities, whether it's frozen water or something else in our lovely January of 2022. Oh, well, but I would agree that Steve's flexibility for repairs and maintenance and those kind of things has been huge. The amount of hours that he spends in the barn has been diminished by a lot from the parlor compared to now. That gives him time to do meeting with the seed people that he is met with and our crop consultant and our management person.
There's so many other things that now you wonder why you don't have a nice big office built in down there too because there's so many days that you're sitting by the kitchen counter with so many people but that's exactly it. There is a lot more flexibility for your other things that you have to get done.
Dr. Joe: Let's talk about that service you mentioned a little bit. One of the things that I have a hard time getting a straight answer from companies that provide robots is when and how old do the robots need to get before they're going to stop servicing those models. Becuse at some point it's going to happen. It has to, right? How far out are they willing to take it? Have you thought about that at all? Does it weigh on your mind? Is it always on the back burner wondering when are they going to stop servicing my robot that's 10 years old already?
Lisa: Well, I definitely know that's been a conversation and as of recent actually, but if you think about what we have, we have the A3 Next. There's some A3s out there. I think the A2 that was in Wisconsin has been replaced now I think with A5s, right? Then you have the, so A3s, A3 Next, the A4s, and the A5s are what's currently in the US I believe. Agree with that? Okay. I guess I'm not yet because there are so many of the different models out there and a lot of the arms are the same. A lot of the components are the same. I don't know if you've noticed, but there's a lot of third-party people starting to create covers for these robots and all kinds of parts.
Farmers are always and have always been good at making things work. Steve knows these robots inside out pretty much, and our son is getting better at fixing them as well. They can find parts if they can't get them from Leadstone/Lely, they can find him somewhere else.
Dr. Joe: It's happened in a couple of cases where I've had dairy farmers that they need to get out of the business for whatever reason, and they think that they don't have any skills to enter the workforce. It's a ridiculous thought because the amount of times that you have to problem solve and figure something out, even just fixing anything mechanical in plumbing, anything, dairy farmers have all those skills. I love that answer. I think that the third-party stuff is huge and servicing your own robot is a big deal. I know you guys aren't probably too far from someone that can get to service but you guys probably still do a lot of your own work on the robots, right? Why is that important? Why do you guys do your own work?
Lisa: You figured that out pretty early on that when not that your time isn't worth something, but we all know that when you bring someone in, they're going to have three, four, five times what you feel is fair or that what you would get paid to do it and understand the machine. At 2:00 in the morning, if you get a phone call and there's something that's going on down there, you can fix it without waiting an hour for someone to show up to fix it because if you can get it fixed in 20 minutes, you've saved yourself 40 minutes now that you can be milking those cows and milking with that particular robot. That holds true for tractors, TMR, skid loaders, all that.
Now, there is a place for those maintenance. We have them come in and do quarterly maintenance and keep up on all those wear parts that just get replaced whether they look or that you would think they need replacing just keep replacing them because it's a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week job milking those cows and those machines just keep going.
Dr. Joe: Downtime's a killer, right? Cost of paying someone to fix it, you can figure that out but how to figure out what it's cost you for that robot to be down an extra hour because you waited for the technician, that's what really is the money behind this. You got cows waiting to get to that robot and they can't get milked. That has some downstream effects, right?
Lisa: They definitely have their time. They set up their own little schedule and now if at 11:00 at night you're down and that's her normal time to get milked, now does she get pushed back when the 11:30 cow comes in? Is she brave enough to push past or is she just going to wait until there's another opening at 12:30? Now she's an hour and a half behind. If you look, these cows are pretty consistent. If they're two or three or four time a day milkers, they're pretty consistent about what time they come in.
If you mess with their time, you're going to push that back and now when will she get milked, or will she be a bossy enough cow to push in? They figure it out. Obviously, you just got to let the machines do their job. Sometimes you have to walk away, even though it's hard to know. There are some cows out there that you could go get and push in but too many people in the barn mess with it too. You just need to let them do what they know how to do.
Dr. Joe: All right. We got to get to one of Bradley's topics here because you've got sensors on the farm, you have to in some way. Brad, you got any questions about sensors?
Bradley: Yes. How have they changed your thoughts on cows? Most of us were in tune to, we got to watch the cows, see the cows, do all that stuff. Are you becoming more of a computer farmer or are you still doing a lot of the physical stuff watching cows or is it a mix between that? Because I think you get a wide range of people. If they put sensors in, they want to walk away and only look at the computer screen and tell me what I need to do. How do you manage that?
Lisa: I feel like in our barn, because we have four, we have 260 cows, and we have afforded to have that full-time herd manager down there and she is a great eyes-on-the-cow kind of person, but for me and for Steve, we have learned how to look at the reports, look at the computer, and notice cows and see cows that way so I feel like it's got to be a combination of the two things. You can stare at that computer all day long, but if you don't see that that cow is limping I suppose you could see that her activity is going to move around, but that takes a little bit for the computer to catch up with that. Like I said, with my part-timers, they'll leave me a little note, "So-and-so is limping or so-and-so had trouble getting up out of the cell. Is she starting with a little bit of milk fever? Is she just fresh? What's going on with her?" You can't see a retained placenta from the computer. There's a lot of things that you still need eyes on those cows. That's why I feel a person that puts in robots, but that is really a crop person will still not achieve as much production/success as someone who still has eyes in that building.
Bradley: I agree. That's why some people have become disappointed in robots because they think it's going to solve all their issues and they're not going to have to worry about the cows. I've heard of some farms putting them in and then have ripped him back out. It takes a little bit of management and a little bit of different thought to be able to manage that.
Lisa: That's a management skill and a management type. Should we say, because honestly there are people that are amazing tie-stall barn managers. They just love those-- They can tell by looking at her the way she's standing, what's going on with her. Those are the people that maybe are better in a parlor setting because they can see her, they have to see her twice a day, three times a day. You just have to know the kind of manager that you are or want to become. You can change management styles, I suppose, and I think that we have, because we're more, like I said, looking at the computer more, trusting what our herd manager says, and that's just part of a growing process over the last 10 years for us.
Bradley: If you think about in dairy perspective, future stuff, do you think that robots are a wave of the future? Should more people consider those? There's a lot of farms that are outdated. Is it a serious option that a lot of people should consider? I know that's a tough question. That's a tough one.
Lisa: Yes, there's a lot of factors that go into, and there's a lot of factors you should be looking at if you're considering them. For someone to say that every 50-cow or 60-cow farm that is considering a free-stall barn should put in robots, well again, aren't we talking management style? Maybe they aren't the crop guy, maybe the wife likes the cows and the guy likes the crops, or vice versa, you got two brothers or something.
It really depends on your management style, but is the industry pushing more towards free-stall barns and parlors and stuff versus tie-stall barns? Unfortunately, that I feel is pushing in that direction. There's a lot of good tie-stall barn managers out there that their cows are well taken care of and I just don't know that that gets enough attention paid to that and enough admiration for what they put in and do for those cows, but yes, I feel like it was the right thing for our farm. Is it the right thing for somebody else's? I don't know.
We had a young couple here last week and we were talking robots and of course, they're very nervous about the whole thing and you just listen to them and their want and desire to continue, they'll make it work, you'll figure it out. The investments there, if you're going to put in a parlor versus the robots and you're worried about the difference in money, I think if you're determined, you'll get it done, and I think that's what has to be. You have to be determined. We did this, now we got to make it go, right?
Joe: That seems to be most important. I see that drive from the younger generation a lot of the time, especially as in practice when we started talking robots. Not always, but usually, there's someone thinking about coming back to the farm, trying to figure out how to be more flexible, have that work-life balance, be a little different than the traditional dairy, and they're the ones pushing the robots. Did your kids start this whole thing or did you guys come up with it to begin with?
Lisa: It was funny because when we did it there was a joke. Matthew I think was one of my kids, those two probably because Jen was all set on vet school and she was on her way. The joke was, "Well, if you put in robots, we'll come back home and farm. I went, "We are not doing this for you, we're doing it for us. If you come home, then we'll have to discuss life after that," but it had to be about us.
It was about some freedoms for the sporting events and the activities and those kinds of things. Don't get me wrong, that freed up some of that time, but we definitely didn't do it thinking, "Oh, well if we do this, our kids will come home." That can be the drawing factor of getting a kid to come home, and you have to decide what that's worth for your farm and your family, but it was a joke when we added ours for sure.
Joe: Well, I like that you guys were selfish on this decision, and some decisions you have to be. It has to be for you because you can't know what that teenager is going to do. I remember myself as a teenager, I had no idea what I was doing either. First of all, I'm sorry that one of your children became a veterinarian.
Bradley: She probably knows everything, knows it all.
Lisa: My oldest is one of my resources that I use on a regular basis.
Bradley: Joe's head just got really big.
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Lisa: No, and her being a veterinarian was since she was in third grade. Not kidding. She knew that's exactly what she wanted. I warned her of debt load and said if she wanted this, we'd stand behind her, support her, but she had to be ready to owe that because that's life. You go that route, you know where you're going, like a doctor, like all those other second four years when you have to do eight years of college that whole deal.
I couldn't be prouder of all three of our kids. It doesn't matter how much education they have, it's the people they've become and the passion they have for the job they have. I'm proud of that. I couldn't be more proud of my three kids. Our three children can't take credit for all obviously, but God, I forgot what the question was. [laughs]
Joe: No, no, it's fine. I was just commenting that you have a veterinarian. I'm glad that you use her as a resource and is a valuable part of the team. I've been trying to tell these two that that's what veterinarians are for.
Lisa: Well, advisory committee, our three kids are on this advisory committee. They're definitely all part of conversations and where the farm-- What changes, and how they feel about it. They see things we don't see. Jen reads stuff I wouldn't even get ahold of. They understand some things and how they see things differently than what I see things. It's easy for me to stay on the same road, don't take a left, don't take a right because it's comfortable.
We've been doing this for 10 years, it's comfortable. Do we want to expand? Scares me a little, but you know what? Then we'll talk about it because you can't stay stagnant. You stay stagnant, I feel like you're just not going to be here in 10 years or 20 years. I feel like your farm is going to not be here, so you have to decide.
Emily: I was going to ask a question about how your children stay involved on the farm because I know they're members of your board and then you just said it, so there went my question, but want to reiterate what a great system I think that is. I've had Lisa speak at programs in the past specifically on that piece and that kind of thing. You've already said a lot about it, Lisa, how you really value their perspective and getting that and I wonder what did your kids say when you first came up with this idea? That, "Hey, we're going to put this advisory group together and you're all going to be on it." What were their reactions to that?
Lisa: Well, I think they like we didn't really know what it was going to morph into but I think the hardest part was to schedule meetings when Jen is up in New York. That was the hardest part. We did a little bit of that Zoom thing or whenever she was home or we would go out and visit, we would try and do one and we learned that having a very set agenda was good. What's been happening, what's new, what's projected for a year, what's projected in three years, those kinds of things, and it's amazing some of the ideas that they think of.
Steve is a big-picture thinker, so he's always got the one-year, the three-year, the five-year thoughts in his head. Not necessarily that he will share them with me because there's a cost behind each one of those things that I want validated that he doesn't quite want to do that yet, but there's always a thought and a forward-thinking in his thought process.
That's one thing I wanted to instill and have our children see because for so many years, they were busy with high school and college and their first jobs and they didn't get to see how these thoughts and plans evolved and how we decided to build the free-stall barn. How we decided to add onto the free-stall barn, why we decided to put the parlor in versus step-up parlor and all those things and you go through all those things. To have them hear the way he thinks and then to help them develop that way of thinking and the pros and cons to things, and then just batting it around the room to what Jen thought versus what Kate thought.
Well, Kate's got some animal science and dairy science and that kind of background just like Jen does, and Matt's got the construction side and the doer side. He's a doer, so a fixer, those kinds of things. Well, that would take a lot to build that and that would do this. They all have their input and we have to value their opinions and their thoughts because if we want them to be here, they have to feel valued now. Then they now can reciprocate that when we are here and sharing our thoughts because eventually, they're going to ask for opinions. [laughs] Eventually. That's what's worked for us right now anyway.
Emily: I think it's so great because you're right, it kind of builds that buy-in with your kids, but at the same time, Jen and Kate, they're both out doing their things and working their full-time jobs, and Matt's at the farm, but that way, even while they're out exploring other opportunities and doing other things, you're still keeping them very grounded and connected to the farm, which I think is so important and something I wish more farms would try to do because I think a lot of times kids go to college start jobs and they can lose that connection and that buy-in and then they lose interest in coming back altogether. I think it's really great that you've thought about that and want to make sure that your kids really know what their options are.
Lisa: We do texting back and forth. I will text a fun event that happened. We had a set of twins of this and we do that and we try and keep them up down the day-to-day even. Milk price is down, milk check did this. We hit these goals. Like I said, lately, just put out their numbers. They were the first people I emailed that information to because them having pride in where they grew up and having pride in dairy and having pride in just Stearns County, Minnesota, however, you want to put it, that's important to me. Feeling that success is important. Whether that's just a little part of that, whether it's because Jen helped me figure out a protocol for vaccines or help me figure out how to do some culturing or whatever. Just to help with that and be part of that success.
Emily: That's so awesome. Love that. [chuckles]
Joe: You guys have a sale count that you guys installed on at least two of the robots.
Lisa: Correct.
Joe: Dealing with the reagents and the expense of that and weighing that against the information you get. Would you do it again?
Lisa: Let's go over what we actually did. We have four robots, but we only installed on two. We put one on the south and one on the north because cows have access to two robots on each side. Our thought process was let's invest half the money and see where it goes. We felt immediately it was an amazing tool to find some of these cows because we all know there's subclinical mastitis out there and you just don't even know where these high count cows are. Conductivity is still a really good tool and we use it in conjunction, I mean together we use those two things. There are several handfuls of cows that don't get tested over a week or two.
Then if you need that, you just push them into the other robot just to get their numbers. We do use it for selective dry-offs. The cows all have to go through robot 1, which has one of the testers on, and that helps us decide should we treat her or not. Has she been treated this lactation? Has she had any issues with any kind of mastitis stuff? Let's do some selective dry treatment. It would be really nice to have somebody help me compile all those numbers to decide if it's really been a good thing. We have decided to not selective-dry treat in the winter, like now during spring as it starts to get wetter. I feel like we had more issues when they came in.
A little higher conductivity, a little higher cell count, but I have to admit, we're having a little more issues with those testers now almost a year later. The sensors are giving us issues. Matthew and Steve have been working on that and that has been a harder part than buying the reagent. To me, it's like anything else you put on the robot. It's like the scale. You had to invest money in it, but isn't it helping you with something, the collars? They're daily use. Well, same with the cell count testers. I think it's a really good add-on, but now we're in a year and like I said, we're dealing with some of the sensors, so I don't know where that goes and I don't know what that means.
We had the joke with one of the technicians up at Melrose that, "Kyle, you're one of the few that haven't called about that thing." I'm like, "Because we fixed it. [laughs] We just did it." They just called Nate and got some information over the phone and took care of it. That's part of it, repairing. If they're going to continually have problems with the sensors though, people will not want to put them in. I don't regret putting them in. I don't know that we'll put the other two in, but I don't regret putting two in just because we saved half of the money. It was half the investment still getting, I believe 90% of the cows are being tested regularly.
Joe: Putting them in with pretty much a plan of how you're going to use the information is key. If you put it in just to get info and you don't have anything to do with it, it's like running a test without knowing what the results are going to change. If you think about everything on the robot that way, I love it. Scales are completely underrated in my opinion. I love scales on anything and I think we should be weighing our dairy cattle a lot more frequently, all the way down to calves all the way through our mature cows but you guys have a plan for what you do with the data, which is the most important piece of all of it
Lisa: That takes time to develop that plan. My biggest advice to anybody just going into this, just learn the mechanics of the whole thing and the idea of know what to do every day. You know which cows to get, which lists to look at, and don't overwhelm yourself with all the data. Just get it started. Get your feet wet. Just step in a little at a time. You'll figure out which reports you need to look at, which ones are just fluff for a day when you sitting by the computer and you don't want to go full laundry or something. Not that that ever happens to me, but it's one of those things that we have to learn how to use that data to better our herds. I feel like we do that. Maybe we miss some of the marks that we should, but we do try and we set goals every year. We try to go over those as long as we get past January so the tax season stuff's done.
Joe: Last question then I'll let Emily wrap it up. Let slip that you like working with calves and I feel like that's somewhat rare. Maybe I'm wrong, but a lot of what you're talking about translates really well to working with calves, the details, making sure that you're consistent. Walk me through, well, first of all, why you working with calves, and how that kind of translates to the rest of the farm?
Lisa: I've been on calves since I'm probably 10 years old and I remember when I was 16 and my dad ever listened to this podcast as well. He told me when I was 16 that I would make a great farmer's wife someday and I laughed and I said, "I am never marrying a farmer." When we got married, we had a farm reception, of course. Steve and I had to go in the barn because my dad couldn't take the night off because we were in a stall barn. We had to go out there and make sure we thanked him for the advice of that farming and growing up this way and the whole bit and that. He was right. Had to marry a farmer. Because I was comfortable in it. How do you not care for the babies? How do you not care for those?
I understand losing patience with them. Completely get that, but they're infants and don't you want to see them grow up and be a successful cow in your herd? I'm very proud of the idea that if I stand in that barn, I can overlook that barn to know I fed every single one of those girls. The joke was one of my feed guys says, "You know why you have too many cows?" I'm like, "Why? Steve won't let me sell any?" He goes, "No, you don't let any die." That was an amazing thing for him to say to me and I appreciate that and we work really hard to get the colostrum in them and to do all that.
I do think that caring for those babies, for those infant calves is maybe who I am, and that resonates around. I don't know. I don't know. I do feel like if I have a little break from calves caring for those infant calves in the calf barn is by far one of my best days. Continuously, we don't have any time off. Time off is a necessity. You need to step away from your position for a little while to come back to appreciate it and then you appreciate the people more that are doing your tasks while you're gone.
Emily: Well, I think that is such a good place to wrap this episode. I love that. You're right. Taking time off is critical. I will say, again, I've been to Groetsch Dairy many times. Those calves are always looking good. They're clean, they're big, they're alert, and especially when Lisa's in there, they are all eyes on her. They know who Lisa is. Really great to see. Lisa, it has just been so much fun to have you on today, so thank you. Thank you for joining us.
Lisa: Well, thank you for that confidence to ask. I have to admit I was a little leery on the whole concept and I think I told you that and that goes for anybody out there, honestly. If anybody wants to chat about cows, calves, robots, Steve and I are both really open to that idea because so many people open their doors to us as well. It is about helping each other to the next step or maybe helping them not take the step if that's what's best for them and their farm, but we do want to reciprocate what people did for us when we started.
Emily: Again, thanks so much for being here, Lisa. That is a wrap on this episode. As always. If you have questions, comments, or skating rebuttals, you can email those to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Joe: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Emily: We also have a voicemail, so if you would like to call in and ask a question and then hear us answer your question on air, you can call that number, which is?
Joe: (612) 624-3610.
Emily: Find us on Twitter @UMNFarmSafety and @UMNmoosroom and be sure to visit our website, extension.umn.edu. That's a wrap. Bye.
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