This summer, we are building a robotic milking barn.  It will house up to 120 cows, milked by two Delaval VMS robotic milkers.  The VMS milkers milk cows automatically 24 hours a day.  Cows come on their own to the robots, primarily enticed by the feed that is available in the robots.  Depending on their production, cows will be milked between 2 and 6 times per day.

The barn will feature an alley flush system to remove the manure.  Six times a day, a wave of water will be released down each alley of the barn to wash out the manure.  Manure, water and sand bedding will flow out the end of the barn into a sand separation lane, and then into a solids separation pit.  From that pit, water will be pumped to a lagoon, where it will be stored and re-used for flushing the barn.