“I . . .AM . . .A . . . ROBOT.

I . . .AM . . .HERE . . . TO . . .MILK . . .YOUR . . .COW.”

If you’ve ever seen a robotic milking machine, you know they don’t look like your usual robot. Sadly, they don’t talk either—as fun as that is to imagine. But robotic milkers can help farmers work faster, smarter, and even cheaper. That’s why more and more U.S. farmers have installed the robots in their cow barns—even if they only have small farms.

The robotic milking system was invented in Europe. It first came to the United States in 2000. For years, mostly big farms used it. After all, it wasn’t cheap! The machines can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But running a farm without milking machines costs quite a few buckaroos too. Milking machines replace expensive and hard-to-find laborers. (Would you stand in line to get up at the crack of dawn to milk a disgruntled cow?) And laborers replaced by milker robots can spend their time doing other farm tasks. Best of all, robot-milked cows give more milk. That’s because they can visit the milker whenever they want—a luxury they would never have working with human laborers.

Robot milkers work like this. A cow steps inside a stall. Grain dumps down in front of it. A mechanical arm reaches down to wash its udder. After a laser scans the cow's body, the arm uses a kind of cup to milk the cow. All the while, the robot milker is answering questions. How much milk does each cow give? What is the cow’s body temperature? How much does it weigh? How often does it visit the milking stall? To get all that info, the farmer doesn’t even have to set foot in the barn! He or she just checks it on the computer. From the machine’s gathered data, he or she can make decisions about the cows. And for once, the farmer might get to sleep in!