The Future Dairy

Where does milk come from? Many people believe that the carton is where the whole process begins. Others have the image of a kindly old man sitting on a stool gently squeezing Daisy's teats with a stream of milk pinging into shiny bucket.
Today milk still comes from cows like Daisy, the difference is the present day Daisy lives with 100's of other cows & milked in a dairy (parlour if you are American) that can milk between 30 & 80 cows at a time. City folk mistakenly believe that the Daisy of the past had the better life. This is far from true in days gone by Daisy lived day to day ,when times were good she had it good but in bad times Daisy had to do it tough. Modern cows are much better fed, many farmers employ a nutritionist to advise them on the best diet for their cows. Many dairies use computers to monitor cow production. With a new Dairy costing around 500 thousand dollars farmers treat their cows well to maximise production.Some farms have automatic calf feeders that feeds the calf when it wants a drink.
Will Robots milks cows in the future? Yes they will as they are already available!(see photo above) In Europe, where there are smaller herds which are housed in barns, there are several thousand. There are about 10 in Australia. The biggest drawback in Australia is the large herd size & the fact that Australian cows tend to graze pastures. Robotic milkers are designed for the cow to milked when she feels like it with some cows being milked 3 or 4 times a day. Sydney Uni's animal science unit is working on a project call "Future Dairy". Part of this project is to develop a robotic milker for Australian condition.
At several hundred thousand dollars each unit farmer want to know this new technology will work before investing.