State your views, where will we be in 10 yrs, who will be milking all the cows???? Would you want a robot to milk your cows??? What do you think, please do submit your thoughts. Is there a future for it or will it just never work?

I don't think you could ever beat a good dairyman (sorry dairyperson!) at spotting a cow with early signs of mastitis, and the earlier it is caught the easier it is to treat, and with increased success. Also what good be better for herd health than seeing each cow individually twice a day? I think there will always be farmers milking for a longtime yet, but as with ACR (Automatic Cluster Removal) there will be those who like it and get on with it and those that don't like it and prefer to remove each cluster (me included - to ensure the cow is milked out, obviously not too much though)

Yeah, your dead right, I cowman can't ever be replaced by a Robot, but the idear is to replace the milking and reduce the long hours of milking, once that is removed there is more time to check over the cows. As for udder health more frequent milking is far better on the udder - how many sucker cows get mastitis - accompanied by conductivity, temperature and coulour measurement on every quarter, I don't mind saying that our robots do a far better job than myself or any other cowman ever could at spotting mastitis, in a far earlier stage than could be seen in a parlour, and even if it doen't a cow that is "under the weather" won't come in to be milked by itself anyway, so she would be to find and see what is wrong. PS ACRs works quarter by quarter, much better than all together - Did you know that there is a difference of 1 min between your cows front quarters finishing, and the back two?