and here's an..udder thing Lely Robotic milker
 

With time kill in the doctor's waiting room yesterday and a paucity of magazines to read (all the usual Motor Trends had disappeared)I was reduced to skimming through an old copy of Business Week
I was delighted to find an article about the Dutch company Lely's robotic cow milking machine where the cow voluntarily enters the machine when its udder is full, thereby obviating the need for rhe dairy farmer to have to rise at ungodly hours to do manual milking
I recall many years ago that one of my UK Rotary Club friends had built a revolutionary carousel type milking parlour where the cows entered the rotating shed so that the milkman could attach the pipes then when done after a revolution the cow simply walked out.
I remember thinking that that was very interesting so I made a note of Lely and have now searched for their machine.I was most impressed to find this informative youtube video



Three and a half years after introducing the Lely Astronaut A3 milking robot, Lely now launches a new automatic milking system: the Lely Astronaut A3 Next.

Re: and here's an..udder thing Lely Robotic milker
 

That is really impressive John.

What if the farmers from say 1880, could be brought back to see this ! :eek:

Very interesting technology video. :)

Re: and here's an..udder thing Lely Robotic milker
 

Many thanks for commenting Omer. you were the only one of over 20 viewers to bother to do so.Yes a fine blending of technology and nature!
Computers and Lasers in particular
I forgot to mention that when I first saw my Rotary friend's rotary carousel about 20 years ago his system already incorported computer recognition of each cow as it entered, linked to a database of the cows milk yield etc
so that an operator could formulate the appropriate mix of feedstock to optimise milk production,to ensure that the cow gets fed automatically as prescribed, a feature I noted is obviously included with the Lely system.
I was particularly impressed to see the use of lasers to locate the teats
remembering that earlier in my lifetime as noted in the Laser wiki at:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser
"When lasers were invented in 1960, they were called "a solution looking for a problem"."
it notes also that
"The first application of lasers visible in the daily lives of the general population was the supermarket barcode scanner, introduced in 1974."
and I recall my astonishment when I saw my first bar code reader in action in a car accesory store in a nearby UK store (Halfords)
followed by Laserdiscs then CDs
now they are everywhere even in dairies!!!

Re: and here's an..udder thing Lely Robotic milker
 

To quote a friend:

boy, ya gotta tug at that cow, tug at that cow, a long time ..... (beatles)

Re: and here's an..udder thing Lely Robotic milker
 

I recall seeing such a machine once while watching How It's Made on The Discovery Channel. It was pretty interesting. Even more interesting is how they kept the barn floor clean with a robotic cleaner. The whole time that all that stuff was going on, the cows acted as if there wasn't anything going on. They weren't stressed out, so they produced more milk.