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kuna, Id | Been through a little bit of this at my cousins place, I only milked there for two months while we were getting my place fixed up and it was a nightmare the entire time I was there. Before I milked there the dairy had been empty for about a year.....the renter went broke. The day after we moved the cows off and over to my place we were up 15lbs of milk and kept climbing... that's when I realized there was something wrong at that dairy. (actually it was the first shift when all the cows stood still ).
The cows didn't want to come into the parlor, they wouldn't let their milk down and kept kicking machines off to the point that I needed two people in the pit just to keep reattaching them, it was taking like 4 hours to milk 75 cows in a double 8 herringbone..... nuts. The cows were all first calf heifers and just never seemed to get going on the milk. Once we were settled in at my place and things seemed to be heading in a better direction I went back and mentioned it to my cousin. I had heard that he had decided to start milking there again and I wanted to save him some trouble. He didn't want to hear it at first but after a few months of getting his butt kicked he finally admitted that there had to be something wrong and called in some electricians and the power company. There were a few things going on but the big thing was that there was a short coming up from the lagoon and when water would run down the the drain from the milk barn to the lagoon it would feed the voltage all the way back up into the parlor and anything that was wet would be live. He had 4 full volts ( a lot for a cow) on the grates that the cows were standing on once they were wet. If the floor and grates were dry you wouldn't get anything for stray voltage, which explained (looking back) why the first couple sides of cows milked pretty trouble free, it was when you started running water and washing down and stuff that things would go downhill. Once they got that figured that out they were able to get it mostly resolved.
As previous posters have mentioned a volt meter with a grounding rod attached to one lead could tell you something, just ground the one lead and touch around the barn with the other, Its all we needed to realize something was up. Don't forget to get things wet when you are checking around. Also, run all the pumps, motors, lights, etc.
Also food for thought, my father in law told me while this was going on that once upon a time he had a huge stray voltage problem at his place (now mine) and it was just a matter of having a loose/corroded neutral connection above the breaker panel......created a lot of havoc for a short time.
Long story short = stray voltage sucks!!
Good luck, Ted
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Stray Voltage
