The Coshocton County Beacon June 10, 2020 | Page 6

4 • The Beacon
The Daugherty family farm’s new barn
features four robotic milkers
By Josie Sellers
coshoctonbeacontoday.com
When Martin Daugherty was a
child, he had to milk two cows
by hand before going to school. Today
the family farm has four robots that
automatically do all the work.
“
What we were
milking in was 50 years
old. We had four parlors
that my dad had
from 1970. We were
very limited with what
we could do.
”
Bill Daugherty
Bill and Caroline Daugherty knew
if they wanted their family farm to
have a solid future for the sixth generation,
they needed to make some
changes.
“What we were milking in was 50
years old,” Bill Daugherty said. “We
had four parlors that my dad had from
1970. We were very limited with what
we could do.”
When their two youngest children,
Kyle and Andi, were still in college,
the family took a trip to visit four
dairy farms to see how they ran their
operations and how robotic milking
machines worked for them. The largest
of the farms had 1,100 cows and the
smallest had 120. They also looked at
farms while traveling to other states to
watch Andi play basketball with her
team at Ashland University.
“When Kyle graduated and we
knew this is what he wanted to do, we
sent him to a conference in Wisconsin,”
Bill Daugherty said.
The two-day conference helped
attendees with robotic milking barn
designs that would help make their
operation more efficient.
Once the barn was built and the
four machines installed, they had to get
the cows used to the new routine.
“We had 20-30 volunteers a shift
helping,” Caroline Daugherty said.
“They caught on very quickly though,
and we had minimal trouble with
them.”
The cows are fed grain while the
This is one of four ro
robots milk them.
“It’s like cand
Daugherty said. “T
back. The robots wil
not been a long enou
come back.”
In addition to be
process and allowin
sleep in a little more
environment for the
sand bedding, and t
lation in here with 4
got really hot in the
The new barn als
Josie Sellers
The new barn has a flush system that takes care of cleaning the walkways of manure six times a day.