MADISON, Wis. — Robots and software were on display at the annual World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wis. this year.

Gray Prescott said he has one of the coolest jobs in all of dairy.

He works for Lely, a company that engineers and manufactures robots used on many Wisconsin dairy farms. Prescott said the technology is making life on the farm much easier for dairy farmers.

“We’re implementing technologies that in a lot of ways the most mundane, routine tasks on the farm,” he said.

One such technology is a new piece of software the company rolled out in the U.S. within the last year. It’s called Horizon and works with all the robots used on the farm.

Adam Griffin works for Lely and said the software has been popular among farmers.

“We’re taking information from sensors on the cows, the sensors in our milking robots, sensors in our feed robots in order to paint the whole picture around what’s going on,” he said.

Griffin said the date was already available to farmers in previous software. What’s new with Horizon is what the software does with the data. Instead of just telling farmers what the numbers are, the new software collects info and offers advice to farmers on how to take better care of each individual cow. Griffin, along with his wife, Melissa, runs a dairy in western Massachusetts.

He said the new software has made a big difference.

“It’s really opened up a whole new avenue for Melissa to manage the herd,” he said.

Prescott said those are the stories he likes to hear, and hears them often. He said he loves interacting with farmers.

“I get to introduce people to this equipment, but they get to introduce me to what they’re doing on their farm, what value a product that we make does or does not have,” Prescott said. “It’s extremely rewarding and super fun.”

The World Dairy Expo took over the Alliant Energy Center from Sunday, Oct. 2 through Friday, Oct. 7.