ROBOTIC FARM FEATURE: ROLINDA ACRES

Rolinda Acres is located in Waterville, Iowa, about 10 miles from the Mississippi river. The dairy is named for the founders, Robert and Linda Thompson. They passed it on to the next generation – Thompson’s daughter Tara, and her husband, Pat Reisinger. Today, the herd is managed by co-owner, Sam Schwartz. Over 1000 cows are milked in a parlor and 15 DeLaval robotic milking machines.

The original robot barn was built with 4 pens and 8 robots. Each pen had 135 stalls, with the intention of milking 70 cows per robot. Sam soon realized that they would not achieve the number of milkings they wanted, to maintain 100 pounds per cow, with 70 cows per robot. 3 more robots were added in 2022. Three of the pens had 3 robots each, while the fourth pen, with 2 robots was used for late lactation cows with lower milking frequency.

In 2024, Sam and Pat visited farms that had added extra robots and stocked the free stalls

at 1½ cows per stall. They learned that robot barns could handle higher stocking densities as long as the barn continued to flow and cows were always distributed between the stalls, the feed bunk, and the robots. Four more robots came on line early in 2025. Before the addition, there were robots that produced well over 7,000 pounds per day. Now they average about 5,500 pounds per robot. But the top producing cows always have a robot available when they need to be milked. It is easier to find time to maintain robots, and the cows recover more quickly if there is downtime. Sam is quick to point out that the higher stocking density demands better stall maintenance and more frequent scaping.

Avoiding downtime is important to Sam. He does most of his own maintenance and is able to resolve most robot problems himself. The savings from doing his own maintenance is significant, but he cautions that downtime is more expensive than maintenance. He suggests that farms with fewer robots might not have the repetition needed to stay proficient at robot maintenance, in which case dealer service is a great value.

When I asked about the ideal robot cow, Sam stressed feet and legs – even over robot friendly udders. It occurred to me that everyone is aware of the cows with poor udder confirmation. They show up on lists with long box times, and high failures or incompletes. The cows that do not come to the robot because of lameness are a little more insidious. Some of them are fetch cows, but more of them fly under the radar with fewer milkings than they need for top production.

Sam measures Rolinda Acres’ success in terms of total milk sold. He believes he sells the most total milk by producing the most milk per cow. And the most milk per cow is achieved by maximizing cow comfort, minimizing robot downtime, providing quality feed, and staying out of the way. And, he believes there is always room to make more milk per cow.