The Vieth family uses modern technology on their innovative dairy farm

For more than five years, Scott Vieth, owner of Scott Vieth Dairy in Windthorst, Texas, had been dreaming of a more efficient way to milk his 550 Holstein cows.

His dream came to life in the form of a 100,000-square foot tunnel vent barn complete with nine milking robots. Housed in their own mini buildings and spread evenly throughout the barn, the milking robots are protected from the elements and are positioned to create the most efficiency. With a robot always close at hand — or hoof — the cows choose when they get milked, no matter where they are in the barn.

“What’s different about my setup is that you essentially don’t need a traditional parlor,” Scott says. “Rather than having to herd the cows into the parlor twice a day to get milked, they come and go as they please, as many times as they want.”

A milking robot resembles a tall metal cabinet with an arm that extends to do the milking. The cows never see the actual robot because each robot is walled off from them. Sporting collars decked out with sensors that track each cow individually, the robot knows which cow is which.

When a cow is ready to be milked, she enters the pen, and the robot gets to work. While the robot milks the cow, a feeding box swivels out to give her a small amount of feed to enjoy while she waits the five minutes it takes to be milked. Some cheeky ladies even try to come back through before they’re ready  to get an extra snack.

Tailored with the cows’ comfort in mind, Scott’s barn lets his herd do as they please. They’re free to eat, drink, rest or be milked. This setup makes the cows, and their farmer, happy.

“Because the cows come and go as they please, it’s stress-free for them,” Scott says. “Which means they can make more milk.”

Before building his dream barn, Scott was milking his cows in the same parlor his parents, Jerry and Margie, used when they built the dairy in 1972. Although the parlor had been upgraded over the years, it was due for an update when Scott bought his dad out in 2018.

“My parlor was getting outdated, and we’re very seasonal here in Texas,” Scott says. “So, not only did I add the robots, but I upgraded the entire facility by building the new barn.”

“It’s more climate-controlled, which really helps with the heat of Texas summers,” he says. “Even in the winter, if it's 20 degrees outside and you walk in there, it's going to be 40 degrees, so 20 degrees warmer. That's a huge asset.”

Both Scott’s cows and his four full-time employees appreciate the barn that stays cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

“They’re like anybody else — they want a nice place to work,” Scott says of his employees. “They're also intrigued by the robots, and when you make that kind of investment, it shows them that you're not going anywhere. You're here for the long haul.”

Besides the temperature-controlled barn, Scott takes other measures to keep his cows comfortable. The barn is outfitted with more than 25 commercial fans overhead and soakers in the feed lanes to keep the cows cool in the intense Texas heat.

“The fans are programmed,” Scott says. “When it gets to a certain temperature, they kick on a little higher. When it gets over about 80 degrees, the soakers will kick on to mist the cows and  keep them cool.”

Also dotted throughout the barn are large, circular brushes. The cows use these brushes to scratch their ears, massage their behinds or to just stay clean. The mechanical brush starts whirring and spinning when a cow nudges it, and she’s free to scratch, massage and rub to her heart’s content.

When the cows want to rest, they have individual water beds to lay on, topped with fresh composted manure as bedding.

One efficient dairy farm

As a mostly one-man show, Scott invests in technology to keep his dairy running efficiently. Besides the milking robots, he also has an automated feed pusher and manure scraper.

“The way the industry is changing, you're either in or you're out,” Scott says. “It’s key to be innovative and progressive.”

Nobody ever said cows were clean eaters, and these messy ladies move their feed around a lot. Pushing the feed back in place manually again and again takes a lot of labor, but it’s necessary to keep the barn clean and reduce food waste. Scott tries to automate labor where possible, and, in this case, he uses an automatic feed pusher. Like a rounder and stouter R2-D2, Scott’s bright red automatic feed pusher, spins down the feed lanes, pushing stray rations back in place.

Underfoot, a manure scrapper runs automatically, keeping the barn clean. It moves slowly enough along the floor that the cows step over it if they’re nearby. The manure goes into a pit and a manure press pushes out all the water to dry it completely. The dried manure is then recycled and used for the cows’ bedding, spread on Scott’s 600 acres of crops or sold to a local mushroom farm for fertilizer.

The final piece of automated technology that has changed the way Scott works is the cow’s rumination collars. The collars do so much more than communicate with the milking robot — they also give Scott real-time data and insights about each cow.

“I love them,” Scott says. “The collars help you find sick cows a day or two earlier. You’ll also know when cows are in heat without spending a lot of man hours watching them. To me, it’s a game-changer.”

Scott can access the information he needs to make the best decisions for his herd using an app on his phone connected to the collars.

“I can see when my cows are milking,” he says. “When I’m working in the barn, I can enter information in the app right then and have it updated immediately.”

Situated on a hill overlooking other dairies and farms as far as you can see, Scott’s operation is both work and home. The brick house his parents built on the dairy, just down the road from where Scott’s grandpa’s dairy once sat, Scott now calls his.

With only so much space available, Scott’s brand-new barn ended up being positioned just 40 yards from his house. There’s enough space for a dirt drive between — but that’s about it.

“It might even be closer than 40 yards. It's like right there,” he says.

“It’s very convenient. With the robots, the cows are being milked 24/7, and if there's an alarm, it's nice to just be able to walk right out the door, go assess the problem and fix it. It can be midnight or one or two in the morning; you just never know.”

As a third-generation dairy farmer, Scott takes pride in continuing his family’s legacy with a focus on innovation, technology and an eye for the future.

Scott’s son, Haven, 19, currently attends Texas Tech University, where he’s studying kinesiology and hopes to coach baseball or football professionally one day. He grew up on the dairy, but while he doesn’t have plans currently to return to take over, he helps out when he’s home with whatever is needed — hauling manure in the fields, putting compost out for bedding in the barn or feeding the calves.

“You’ve got to keep up with times,” Scott says. “But the next generation also has to want to participate and take over.”

“With the robots and the barn, if my son wanted to come back, this is something that might be a little more intriguing for him,” he says. “I've got something state-of-the-art compared to something that's old and outdated. It's something he could fall back on. Right now, it's probably not in his plans, but that could change.”