iowa dairy center

This started as a drive by let's stop with no knowledge as to what was in store other than robotics in the milking parlor. As people who grew up on a farm and had a hobby farm at one time it was quite interesting to see the advances in dairying. The tour is not a peek through the windows but going through displays of the history followed by a long walk through the barns. We were shown the classic milking in operation in both the four parallel and four diagonal stalls set up back to back with the operator in the middle. The milk processing is also shown here. In the next barn we observed the robotic milking through the window for various operational reasons. The displays showed the statistics of robotic milking versus the typical machine with data on both holsteins (large) and Swiss (small). The remainder of the tour included a walk through the various barns. The adults and children in our tour group all enjoyed the tour.