Many aspects of our dairy and ways of thinking have changed here at Hillcrest Farms since moving to a robotic milking system. The work is less physical and more mental

As winter turns into spring, we try to catch up on many random projects around the farm

Farm work often requires road travel, whether it is driving equipment from field to field, trucking animals from one location to another, or hauling milk

The other night, our robotic milkers called 36 times with one alarm or another. My dad got an early start on morning milking simply because he had been up since 11 p.m. the night prior tending to the robots

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is a phrase we have all heard and can relate to

The Wisconsin Farm Related Fatalities report showed 41 farm fatalities in 2017 and 34 in 2018

‘Tis that time of year again. Everyone’s on edge for obvious reasons; harvest is a pretty big deal. For a lot of the country, it seems like corn in 2020 will be better than it was 2019, and...

“Never stand behind a horse” were the words my grandfather periodically repeated during my childhood at the farm. Thanks to him, I learned at a young age that I could be kicked and severely...

My parents bought a farm that came with a house. The house ended up being a bit of a fixer-upper . . . I’m talking very little siding, negligible plumbing, and small animals in the walls

We have been milking with robots for three months now. The months of construction as well as the retraining of cows were both stressful and labor intensive

It’s been a while since we have written a blog as we have been busy starting up our milking robots

We finally placed two robots in our new main robot barn this week. A little over two years ago at the Western Dairy Management Conference, I was sitting at a table talking to two dairymen from Wisconsin

For many parts of the country, winter teased us with a mild start. Then mid-January hit, and along came snow, frigid cold, record-breaking wind chills, and ice

The Idaho Dairy Worker Training and Safety Program has been almost three years in the making

When every dollar counts, dairy producers must decide where to invest their time and resources

With two years of planning and touring robotic farms under our belts, it is now time to break ground on the next phase for our family farm

I often have talked about stubborn farmers who make less than desirable patients. My late father never sought medical care

Have you checked out your farm on Google Maps and Google Earth? How does it look? What can people see?

“What’s the reward-risk?” opened Tom Overton in his presentation on adoption of new technology at the recent Cornell Nutrition Conference

Extra thought put into a robot barn design is time well spent