WESTBROOK – Transition to a less labor-intensive milking system could start as early as this weekend as the farm begins to sell or temporarily move some of its herd.

WESTBROOK – Smiling Hill Farm in Westbrook plans to temporarily stop milking cows on site as the farm transitions to a less labor-intensive type of milking system, according to Warren Knight, president of the family farm’s board of directors.

The transition could start as soon as this weekend as the farm begins to sell or move some of its cows.

However, the farm will continue to have the local milk products and ice cream for which it is known, Knight said.

Although some of the farm’s herd of about 60 cows will be sold, others will simply go to other farms to graze and be milked and Smiling Hill will continue to get the milk from those cows, Knight said.

The farm also will get milk from cows at farms whose milk Smiling Hill already bottles. Smiling Hill already has the practice of accepting excess milk from those farms, Knight said.

The farm’s milk-producing cows could start leaving as early as Sunday or Monday, he said.

But even with Smiling Hill’s milking cows gone, Knight said that farm visitors and passers-by still will be able to enjoy the sight of black-and-white Holsteins grazing on the pastures of the farm at 781 County Road.

He said that’s because Smiling Hill will continue to keep a herd of about 60 cows – but they will be “dry” cows that currently are not giving milk and heifers, cows yet too young to give milk.

Knight said that while the way the 500-acre farm gets its milk is undergoing a temporary change, “the overall mission and direction of the company is not.”

The Knight family, which has been farming in Westbrook since the 1700s, produces fresh natural milk at the farm without chemical fertilizers, pesticides or artificial hormones.

Knight said the farms that Smiling Hill bottles milk for and obtains milk from – Harris Farm in Dayton and Sherman Farm in Conway, N.H. – produce the same type of natural high-quality milk from their cows.

Smiling Hill also recently started processing and packaging milk from Maine’s Own Organic Milk, or MOOMilk, a company formed by 10 organic dairy farms in the state. Knight said the farm also gets excess milk from that company too.

Knight said the change in milk production involves a personnel matter that he can’t discuss for privacy reasons.

But he said that, essentially, the farm can no longer produce milk with the labor-intensive milking method it uses now.

Smiling Hill is exploring installing a different milking system that involves less human labor, Knight said.

The farm currently uses a dumping station method that involves workers manually picking up and carrying lots of heavy containers full of milk, he said.

Other methods, such as a pipeline system in which milk flows through pipes, or a milking parlor in which cows come to the person doing the milking, involve less labor, Knight said. He’s also looking into the possibility of getting a robotic milking stall that involves even less human effort.

The stall, which would stand outside and which cows would come to because it would also feed them some grain, would be able to do an electronic read of a metal tag each cow would wear and know when it was last milked and whether it was time to let it enter the stall for another milking, Knight said. The stall would have the ability to automatically attach a milking machine to a cow and also cleanse the machine afterwards so it would be ready for another use.

Knight said that what the robotic stall is able to do is so fascinating, “I bet I could charge people to watch it work.”

The robotic milking stall is used in Europe and there are a few in the United States, he said.

However, the stalls are very expensive and the other milking systems are costly too, so the farm is investigating all the options, he said.

Knight said he hopes that the farm – which, in addition to its popular dairy store, has a petting zoo it recently re-opened after a nine-year hiatus – will be able to get a new system quickly installed, but said he could not give a date when that might happen.

“The long and the short of it is that we’re going through a transition period with our cows,” Knight said.