Many of us have gotten accustomed to using technology in our daily lives. There are so many applications for technology that span to alarm systems, household cleaning robots, advanced computer systems and and iPad.
An extension of my body... my Apple iPad
But what many people don’t realize, is that this technology has spread to farming as well.
Technology is encompassing all parts of agriculture, but I will focus primarily on dairy. Believe it or not, I know a lot of dairy farmers that have a smart phone. And most of them know how to use it; we are not dummies, that’s for sure! Check out @zweberfarms and @ezweber. They’re a husband and wife team of dairy farms from Minnesota and they use their phones to the max.
On the dairy farm, we obviously milk cows. But have you ever wondered how we actually milk the cows? We certainly don’t do it by hand anymore. Some of the best technology we have is our milking equipment. Since we have limited funds and time we have embraced technology in the milking parlor to save money and labor. A good deal of dairy farmers have something called automatic take-offs. What these do is monitor the cow’s milk output in the parlor. By keeping track of that, the computer in the system will determine when the milker needs to be take off. It’s an amazing technology because it reduces the human error and therefore the comfort of the cow in the parlor!
Another technology a lot of farmers have accepted is computers. Farmers have emails, websites and farm videos. But on top of that, we also use computers to keep track of our cows. Paper is a wonderful method of keeping records; I don’t know about you, but I misplace forms and important papers all the time. With an entire farm to keep track of paper is often a lost cause on a farm. There are dozens of computer programs out there specifically developed for farmers. Instead of shuffling through papers to find out what we treated Besty with, all we have to do is go to the computer and search for her!
These are just a few of our more basic technologies on dairy farms! But even these little miracles help us to do a better job taking care of our cows and making a better product for you; our consumer!
