DORCHESTER, Wis. — Robotic dairy farming has taught Jake Peissig to think outside the box and let the technology work for him, helping to maximize his efficiency and profitability.
Peissig launched his robotic dairy farming career at JTP Farms in 2012, building a barn equipped with four DeLaval robotic milking units milking 250 cows. Over the past 12 years, he has reimagined his farm several times, figuring out how to utilize technology to his best benefit.
“When we first built the barn, the robots were the most expensive part of the barn, so it made sense to maximize the robots, having 60-65 cows per robot,” Peissig said. “As time went on the robots stayed the same price but the cost to build doubled. Now it’s cheaper to add milking robots and maximize the barn space.”
To accomplish this, Peissig has doubled the number of robotic milking machines without expanding the barn’s footprint by increasing the number of cows in each pen.
Peissig’s barn is 350 feet wide by 160 feet long, with sand-bedded free stalls. The barn is cross-ventilated, using baffles in conjunction with 17 fans on the north wall.
“It’s still old school, before stir fans and VES fans,” Peissig said. “But for the number of hot days we have, our air movement is good — and baffles are cheaper than fans.”
The barn uses the guided flow system, requiring cows to move in a circular pattern through the barn to reach the robots and feed.
“The smart gate sorts cows to the feed bunk or the robot, depending how long it’s been since she visited the robot,” Peissig said. “The average cow in the barn makes the circle 12 times a day.”
A footbath is operated at the exit of each robot, which Peissig fills once a week with a copper sulfate solution. The herd is trimmed annually. The sort gates are also used to separate cows for herd health on a weekly basis and for reproductive protocols.
Nearly three years ago, following his father’s retirement, Peissig decided to add automated feeding.
“Dad did a lot of the feeding, and I was having a difficult time finding a good part-time feeder,” Peissig said. “Adding the feeding system helped solve those headaches.”
Peissig said the automated feeding system scans the feed bunks with a laser to determine when feed is needed.
“When the feed height falls to a certain level, it mixes another batch of feed,” Peissig said. “With this system, we have virtually zero refusals.”
Peissig’s system uses two robotic mixers. Typically, one robot is feeding while the other is being loaded.
“They are mixing and feeding about 36 loads a day,” Peissig said. “We leave the cows in the same group their whole lactation, rather than moving groups. If anything, we will adjust the pellets fed in the robots for high cows. If we had 16 pens, the robot could mix 16 different rations if we programmed it to.”
With his quest to increase efficiency, Peissig began to reconsider efficiencies in his milking system in 2021 when he added the fifth and sixth robotic milking units.
“We had decided to quit keeping and raising our heifers and buy replacement cows,” Peissig said. “Our heifer facilities needed updating and repairing. My dad did most of the heifer chores; with his retirement, we decided not to go the heifer route anymore. It allowed us to shrink our labor force.”
That decision freed up space in the barn and Peissig took advantage to experiment with new ideas, turning his calf and pre-fresh area into another milking pen.
“We have 56 or 57 free stalls in all the other pens, so we put 56 stalls in the new pen,” Peissig said. “I wanted to see what would happen if we put two robots in one pen, and see how many cows we could get in.”
Peissig learned he could get 100 cows in the pens, with two robots.
“It was only 50 cows per robot, but it took us from an average of 2.7 milkings per day, up to 3.4 milkings,” Peissig said. “Increasing the number of milkings lowered our somatic cell count.”
A year later, Peissig added an additional robotic milking unit to two of the original 60-cow pens, increasing cow numbers in each of those pens. Today, he is milking around 420 cows housed in five pens with eight robots.
“I like it,” Peissig said. “I still have two 60-cow pens with single robots, so I could add two more robots and end up with 10 robots in a barn I originally built for four, milking 600 cows in a barn built for 250.”
To make the decision to increase his stocking density, Peissig used the data the technology in his barn provided. Peissig both evaluated his options and continues to monitor the results.
“We milk and feed with robots, we have rumination and activity monitors … yet I was lacking the time to sort through to find the data I needed,” Peissig said.
Peissig learned of the Connecterra plan, a program that pulls all of the data gleaned from the technology he has implemented on his farm into a single location for easy analysis.
“(That) enabled me to bring in laying time, eating time and rumination time, per pen that was overcrowded versus the non-overcrowded pen,” Peissig said. “I’m able to cross-reference that with lactation number, days in milk — all of those different variables — and look at each one, to see how the cows are responding to the stocking density.”
Peissig considers his use of technology an investment in efficiency as opposed to an expense.
“Several years ago, someone told me that as an owner-operator or manager of a business, you should consider that your time is worth at least $100 per hour,” Peissig said. “You don’t think of that when you’re busy fixing hydraulic hose, forking out calf pens or stuff like that. Using technology allows you to become more efficient and effective in how you use your time.”
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