Labor and Arm TakeOffs - How Arm TakeOffs can help reduce costs in the dairy parlor

There are several ways to analyze the cost of your milking labor. For example....

Assuming one Milker can indeed operate a dbl. 12 HerringBone with Arm TakeOffs by him or herself, milking at the rate of 90 cows/hr for seven hours. You'd be milking some 600 to 650 cows 3x with a crew of 4 milkers, including a full time relief man. The milkers work 9 hrs per shift, 45 hrs/week with the 9th hour being the last hour for this shift and the first hour for the next shift, typically that's clean-up time.

You were fortunate to find good people and you are paying well, like $30,000 or $35,000/yr for some $120,000 to $150,000 per year of total milking payroll.

You'll need twice that many milkers to milk the same 600 cows through a parallel with rope or chain detachers, since Arm TakeOffs can not be used in a Parallel. That's twice the training, twice the management and twice the annual payroll.

Now look at the future and assume that the efforts to keep illegal immigrants out of the country will be successful. Skilled milkers will be increasingly hard to find and those you do find will be increasingly aware of their worth, their value to you.

What are the chances that thousands of young Americans - the high school students in your very town - will go back to milking cows? Zip! Their buddies are going to college, into the military or at least to a community college. Milking cows? Slaughtering chickens? Mucking manure? Hardly. What would the girls think and who would they date?

It'll cost you for those who are willing to do the work - immigrants - and ever fewer of them.

The time will come when your decision to milk with Arm TakeOffs will look pretty darn good.

Take a look at what's being done in HerringBones with Arm TakeOffs