How to Shave Hours Off of the Milking Shift

Are you pulling your hair out because your milking parlor is constantly running behind schedule, the seven hour shift is stretching out to nine hours and the flow of feeding, cleaning stalls and everything else in the back of the barn is thrown off because you just can't seem to get all the groups milked on time?

If that's you, you're not alone. This is one of the biggest frustrations and time and money drains for a lot of dairies. 

I sat down recently with Elsie Gonzalez Leach, founder of Motiva Dairy Consulting, to find out how she is helping clients shave hours off of milking shifts on the Uplevel Dairy Podcast. 

“Usually what I hear is that we're milking three times a day and we're having trouble keeping  consistency among the shifts,” Gonzalez Leach says. “That's throwing everything else off because it's taking eight and a half hours just for milking, and the next day nine … and everything else is then thrown off.”

This problem may not be due to what’s happening in the parlor, but rather what is going on in the barn. Gonzalez Leach says, “Most times, it's about working with the people and showing them better ways to move the animals efficiently from the pen into the holding area.”

To show employees better ways, she puts on her overalls and gets out in the barn. This is where she often finds the bottlenecks in cow flow, which are directly related to the habits and beliefs around what it takes to make cows move.

 “It's this perception … if I don't whistle, they won't move. Or  if I don't hit the panel, the cows won't come in,” Gonzalez Leach says. 

She challenges those beliefs by working alongside employees and supporting them through making a change in their cow handling practices, such as not whistling or making noise.

 In her experience, it takes three days and three shifts of being there and coaching employees through these changes. That’s when they not only shift their beliefs but can start seeing the results to prove that the change made a positive difference. 

 With one particular farm, Gonzalez Leach was able to cut two hours off the time it was taking to get all of the cows milked, reducing the milking shift from 8 hours down to 6 hours.

As a consultant, the key to success, she says, is not simply in telling people what changes need to be made, but rather, guiding them through and revisiting the adjustments to ensure they stick, so that dairies can successfully shave hours off of their milking shifts.

To listen to the entire conversation on the UpLevel Podcast, click here:

For more from UpLevel, read:

• Spilled Milk, Empty Buckets and Hungry Calves
• Managing 8,000 Cows with Activity Monitors at Del Rio Dairy
• The 15-minute Meeting that Engages Employees
• 8 Questions to Move Your Dairy Business Forward
• The One Phone Call that Saved a Dairy, and a Dairy Farmer
• Dairy Leader’s Greatest Challenge Leads to Exponential Industry Impacts
• 3 Technologies for Finding Your Most Profitable Cows