Automated Dairy Specialists work with mutiple dairy farms across the midwest

One cow on a dairy farm creates a $5,000 economic impact on a local community. Imagine a dairy farm with 500 cows. That's a $2.5 million local economic impact, creating revenue and opportunity.

A key component to dairy business success includes Automated Dairy Specialists, LLC, located in Clearwater, Nebraska.

ADS has worked to provide high quality technology and equipment to customers in the dairy industry and pride themselves on providing tools to help customers continue being successful in producing food for the nation.

ADS assists clients in Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa and Kansas. Dan Schindler started the company approximately 25 years ago and Automated Dairy Specialists has continued to stay here ever since.

According to Connie Bellingtier, Automated Dairy Specialists manager, nearly all of their employees are located in the area, so it made the most sense to stay here. Bellingtier said the company had an opportunity to move to a bigger town but wanted to continue to support small towns and stay close to loyal customers.

"Clearwater was really inviting and they worked hard to get us to stay here," Bellingtier said. "Dairy and livestock production is our passion, and we are grateful for the opportunity to work in our small town of Clearwater and reach so many producers across the midwest."

With 10 employees, including two remote service technicians, ADS services about 120 different dairy and robotic dairy farms. ADS work with different vendors, including Lely Robotics and BouMatic in order to get the specific products clients are searching for. After customers purchase equipment, ADS installs it into the desired dairy facility.

Each year, equipment used to milk cows becomes more automated or "hands-off." Some of the first additions to the industry would remove milking units from cows using automatic detachers that would detect milk flow to decide when to stop milking.

For a robotic dairy farm, equipment like this is important. On robotic farms, cows choose to go to the robot to be milked, unlike a traditional farm where cows are milked at set times a day. The robot will perform all the cleaning, prepping and milking that a person would on a traditional dairy farm.

Some machines the company installs help milk cows and cool milk. ADS also sells chemicals used to clean and maintain equipment.

Recently, ADS has started to branch out into the beef cattle and feedlot world, with supplies like hoof care products from HealMax and working area rubber.

But, the main focus will remain on dairy.

"Dairy is who we are, but the beef and feedlot industries are very intwined with this industry so, we see a need to provide solutions and services to all of those industries," Bellingtier said.

ADS offers technical support for dairy farms to make sure all of the automated systems run correctly. Due to some dairy farms continuously running all day, Automated Dairy Specialists have created an on-call schedule for employees to ensure that a service person is available 24 hours a day, every day of the year. This helps to make sure that whenever there is a problem with a client's equipment, a technician will be able to provide assistance.

After increasing their number of employees, ADS needed more room. The business recently moved to a newly constructed office building at 203 E. St. in Clearwater.

With the bigger space, ADS will be able to provide more equipment for clients. An open house is planned for later this summer, once construction is finished.