How to Milk Your Cows in 30 Minutes

Reader Contribution by Steve Judge and Bob-White Systems
Published on October 15, 2015
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Yes you can milk your cows in a half an hour.

I have a micro dairy in Royalton, Vermont.  It ties four cows and can accommodate a calf or two.  Right now I am milking two cows and I have a dry cow due anytime.  This morning I was a little late in getting to the barn to do the morning milking.  But I got my cows into the barn, milked them and turned back out in less than 20 minutes.  The barn was clean and the milking equipment was cleaning itself as I headed back down to the house to make my breakfast and then head off to work.  I won’t return to the barn until 6 or 6:30 PM this afternoon/evening to milk my cows again.  Maybe my third cow will have calved by then. 

How quickly someone can milk their critters and do their barn chores depends upon how their barn is set up and equipped and how efficient their routines are.  Time is money and money is time.  If I value my time at $20 an hour (at age 64 I hope that is a fair value in today’s labor market) then every hour I save is $20 in my pocket.  Back in the day, dairy farmers were encouraged not to value their time at all.  So if it took a half a day to clean up your milking equipment so what??  If it took a half a day to do your barn chores, so what??  If it took you half a day to repair a $5 hand tool then so what?? You saved yourself $5 because your time is worth nothing.   For me those days are long gone.

I am into accomplishing things, not ritualistic drudgery. When I equipped my barn I decided it was well worth investing in a small pipeline.  Years ago I milked cows with bucket milkers.  Not only was it hard work lugging the milk around, but cleaning the four buckets and claws by hand took forever. Today claw washers are available for bucket milkers and they speed up the cleaning process but it still involves a lot of manual work.  My pipeline cleans itself after each milking.  It works like a big washing machine.  It uses the same amount of detergent that I would use if I washed buckets by hand and it probably uses a bit more hot water and electricity to run the vacuum pump but to me the time saved has significant value.  It saves me at least an hour of my time a day.  At $20 an hour that adds up to be $140 per week or $7,280 per year.  I had my pipeline paid for in less than two years.  

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