He added that Lely offers farmers a lot of help preparing their farms, installing the systems, and learning to operate and manage them. The company also offers preventive maintenance checks to catch potential defects early.

Dieball also said farmers should ignore those who say that robotic milking systems break down frequently.

“ I talk very highly of them, they’ re very reliable – they have their days and things break, but they do their job and harvest a lot of milk,” he said.

He added he may not still be in the dairy business without robotic milking.

“ If we didn’ t have automation, I likely wouldn’ t have cows because of the workload and the labor you need,” Dieball said.“ When we made that decision I didn’ t really want to milk a whole bunch of cows; this way we get more production, and I didn’ t have to get grossly bigger.”

“ We’ re getting what we expected out of it and what our financial planning projected,” he added.“ I’ m happy we did what we did.”

The robots are also helping Dieball Dairy continue to compete against industrial dairy farms which are growing increasingly larger and putting smaller, family-owned operations out of business.

Mid-County man

Dieball has been a member of the Mid-County Co-op board of directors for more than a decade. He said he has enjoyed being a part of the co-op and watching it grow over the years.

“ It’ s really neat to look at where the company

SUBMITTED PHOTO

Some of Dieball Dairy’ s cows poke their heads out of their stalls to eat. The farm’ s free-stall parlor was designed to encourage free cow traffic, allowing the cows to decide when they eat, drink, lie down, and are milked. This improves cows’ well-being, maximizing milk production.

was at when I joined and see how it’ s grown to where it’ s at today,” he said.“ It’ s a very wellmanaged company that does a lot for farmers in

the area, and it’ s fun to be on a board that has been successful.”

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