The Robot Milker Who Played Favorites
We installed a new robotic milker, and within a week one cow named Dolly was using it like a coin-operated massage chair.
The robotic milker came on a flatbed truck in March, wrapped in plastic like a refrigerator the size of a small house. I had read the manual twice. It promised that cows would visit voluntarily, one at a time, whenever they felt like it. I assumed that meant when they were full. I did not assume it meant when they were bored.
The first week went fine. Cows walked in, got milked, walked out. The machine beeped politely and logged each visit on a screen in the office. I felt like a man in a space movie. Then, on Thursday, I noticed that one cow was getting more entries than any ten of her sisters. Her name was Dolly, a sleek black cow with the posture of a pageant winner, and she was visiting the robot eleven times a day.
It turned out she liked the brushes. The unit has a soft rotating brush that comes down at the end of the cycle, and Dolly had decided it was a luxury spa. She would stand there with her eyes half shut for a full six minutes, and the machine, being patient and unable to say no, would give her the whole treatment each time. The screen showed a pile of little green checkmarks and a very small line of milk.
I tried a gate to limit her visits. She went around it. I tried scheduling. She ignored the schedule. A technician came all the way out from Fort Worth, studied the logs, shook his head and said, 'This is not in the manual.' We named the setting 'The Dolly Hour' and moved on.
The other cows eventually caught on, and by summer the barn looked like a day spa with a waiting list. Production did not suffer, to be honest. Calm cows, as they say, give more. I told the story at the district meeting and a man in the back row stood up and asked if the brushes came in a bigger size. I take that as the best review the product ever got, and farm.FM gave it a whole page with no help from the manufacturer.
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