A dairy cow steps through a small metal gate toward a bucket of food. As the cows grabs some feed, a gate slowly closes behind it and a machine whirs to life.
A robotic arm moves underneath the unbothered cow. A camera in the arm uses pictures to create 3D renderings while a burst of water and disinfectant cleans and coats the cow’s udders. Soon, it begins milking the cow through the use of the imaging while monitoring the animal’s health.
When it’s done, the gate opens and the cow walks out.
This is the future of Maine’s dairy industry and it’s all on display at University of Maine’s J. Franklin Witter Teaching & Research Center in Old Town.
Robotic milking has been used in America since 2000, but this is just the third robotic milking barn of its kind in Maine. The barn allows cows to be milked when they feel they need to be and lets farmers spend more time focusing on the health of their livestock and doing other tasks.
Glasses of milk are handed out to guests at an event to kickoff Maine Dairy Month at the University of Maine’s J.F. Witter Teaching and Research Center in Old Town on Friday. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik / BDN
Gov. Janet Mills listens to Patricia Henderson, superintendent of the J.F. Witter Teaching and Research Center, explain how the robotic milking system works during a tour of the robotic milking barn on Friday.
Gov. Janet Mills watches a robotic milking system at the University of Maine’s J.F. Witter Teaching and Research Center in Old Town on Friday. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik / BDN
The machine costs $250,000 and milks all 31 cows at the farm, including Phish, Raptor and Dumbo. The cattle became familiar with the machine over the past two months and have created their own “cow hierarchy” to decide who can be milked when, according to one of the farm workers.
As part of the kickoff for Maine dairy month, Gov. Janet Mills and University of Maine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy highlighted the Witter Farm robotic barn as a way Maine will sustain its dairy industry, which has lost a third of its dairy farms since 2020.
“[The barn] will help our students be more ready for careers in modern agriculture, and it will address some of the major challenges that face the industry, like workforce shortages and rising production costs,” Ferrini-Mundy said.
Tariffs and rising costs are among the recent hurdles Maine’s dairy industry has faced, Ferrini-Mundy said. Mills said the innovation is a step in keeping the state supportive of agriculture and its farmers.
“We don’t want to see the kind of sprawl in Maine that we see in other states where beautiful land such as this goes into development, and we no longer look and feel like Maine,” Mills said.
“Open space is part of our heritage, part of our economy, part of our sense of place here in Maine. So every kind of innovation that keeps this kind of land open and you in use is valuable to us and the generations to come.”
