美国国家公共电台 NPR When Robots Milk Cows, Farm Families Taste Freedom

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On a growing number of dairy farms, people don't decide when the cows need to be milked. The cows do. That's because farmers have called in robots to do the milking - day or night. And for some families - the ones that run small dairies - the robots mean freedom. NPR's Dan Charles reports.

DAN CHARLES, BYLINE 1: Carol and Bill Shuler and their two sons, Billy and Wyatt, run a dairy farm near the town of Baroda in southwest Michigan. And for decades, family life revolved 2 around milking 40 cows.

BILL SHULER: At quarter to four every morning, the first thing we did - we would clean the barn out.

BILLY SHULER: We fed the cows. We milked the cows. And then at 3:00 in the afternoon, it all started over again. Feed the cows. Milk the cows.

CAROL SHULER: Milking time is kind of like our meal time. You know, we were more likely to be together during milking time than we were during meal time.

CHARLES: That was Bill, Billy and Carol Shuler. There were no weekends off - no holidays. If there was a big family get-together 3 like a wedding, Bill Shuler says, they'd get there late or leave early.

BILL SHULER: If you're a small operation and you can't hire help, you're a virtual slave to your farm.

CHARLES: On top of that, recent years have been really tough for dairy farmers. Milk prices have slumped 4, as they sometimes do. Farmers are eating into their savings 5. Some are giving up on dairying. Bill and Carol Shuler wondered if their two sons really would want this life. Their grandmother, Shirley Shuler, really had her doubts.

SHIRLEY SHULER: You couldn't encourage them because you know it isn't easy. You know it isn't easy.

CHARLES: But a couple of years ago, Billy and Wyatt told their parents they did want to be dairy farmers, and the Shulers decided 6 to make a big investment for the future of the farm and the family.

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CHARLES: There's a big new barn on the farm now. Inside it, a hundred cows spend their days lounging on sawdust. And every once in a while, one of them decides it's her own personal milking time. She strolls down to one end of the barn where there's a small, trailer-sized building.

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CHARLES: She pushes through a metal gate and walks into that building into a special cow-sized chamber 7 that holds her in place. A sensor 8 reads her ID tag, and a robotic arm swings into action, reaching toward her udder.

BILL SHULER: OK. So here we go.

CHARLES: Yep.

BILL SHULER: The first thing it's going to do is sanitize each teat with an iodine 9 solution. Then it'll go back and put the milkers on individually.

CHARLES: I see a little red light. Is that...

BILL SHULER: Those are the lasers.

CHARLES: That's right - lasers. That's how the robot finds the teats. It takes the machine a couple of tries to attach the milkers. A human would do this much faster. But eventually, it succeeds, and milk flows through hoses into a big storage tank. Bill Shuler's sons are usually here, but they don't have to be - at least not every minute. If something goes wrong, they'll get an alert on their phones.

Robots are milking just a small minority of American cows - maybe 5 percent. But the share is growing. Big dairies are buying them to replace workers, often immigrants. Small farms have been getting them to replace family labor 10.

BILL SHULER: It absolutely changes your lifestyle. It gives you a life.

CHARLES: There's been a lot of talk lately about robots taking people's jobs. Bill Shuler hopes this robot will help his sons stay in the dairy business.

BILL SHULER: If this technology was available 25 or 30 years ago, I'd still have more friends milking cows today. I have a friend - he's a couple years older than I am. I'm sure he would have robots. He'd still be milking cows today. His son would probably be there with him.

CHARLES: In fact, a small family-run dairy farm like this is rare enough these days, Shuler's turning it into a tourist attraction. Hundreds of people visited last year. Kids love the cows, he says. Older people are amazed by the robots. Dan Charles, NPR News.

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