Milking a dairy herd without anyone present · Ceded (since 1992)

On 18 August 1992 the first Lely Astronaut sends milk to the tank on a Dutch farm, attaching the cups itself and letting the cows come when they choose.

Hand milking had already left commercial dairies with the vacuum machine and the pipeline parlour, but a person still crouched twice a day to clean the teats and hang the cluster. The robot took that as well, finding the teats with laser and camera, attaching, logging yield and conductivity quarter by quarter, and letting the herd set its own hours, and some fifty thousand of these units have been installed since. What the farmer keeps is the eye on the animal, the decision to call a vet, the treatment of mastitis, the culling choice, the hoof trimming and the repair of the robot itself. Hand milking remains the norm on smallholdings across South Asia and East Africa, which between them hold a large share of the world's dairy cows.