Slideshow: Meilink Dairies Ltd.

With no room to expand at his home farm, Roelof Meilink built a new freestall barn near Red Deer, Alberta. It originally housed heifers, but the plan was to one day add on a parlour and move in the milking herd.

However, when his sons, Johnny and Erwin, wanted to join their father in the farming operation, they started looking at automation. The barn was retrofitted to include five automated milking systems, an automated bedding system, automated feed pusher and automated manure scrapers.  

Read more about Meilink Dairies Ltd. View the operation in the slideshow below. Photos by Karen Lee.

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Automated feed pusher

There are two automated milking systems in each of the main milking pens.

 

Automated bedding system that travels on a rail above the stalls.

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The two main milking groups are located on one half of the barn.

 

A single automated milking system is located in the fresh cow pen.

The hopper is filled every 8-10 days with sawdust for bedding.

A conveyor automatically fills the bedding unit from the hopper.

Dry cows are kept in the barn too.

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Automated manure scraper