These farms operate and often look different than their smaller cousins. On many of the larger farms there is more than one barn and the barns themselves, called freestall barns, are different. The cows kept in these barns can wander around and rest where they want within the barn’s confines. Some have bare concrete floors perpetually coated with slippery grease-like manure, where walking at a fast pace can lead to a nasty landing. Some of them are open-air with a roof overhead and walls or bars just high enough to keep the cows from leaving the barn. Instead of being milked in stalls, these cows are led into milking parlors, usually four or more at time, and are milked at milking stations. On very large dairy farms, like the Flood’s in Maine, a milking carousel holding 50 cows rotates slowly with one cow getting on while another gets off after completing it’s milking. These farms have several employees, many of them specializing in tasks like milking or heavy equipment operation. While this setup will be an answer for some farmers, they, like other solutions, have their drawbacks. They require large stretches of land, are costly to build and they have an Achilles heel: the need of labor.
 For the larger farms to function they must have a supply of labor. Unlike the smaller farms, that often can’t afford the labor but can get by with family help, larger farms have the problem of finding a big enough pool of people that are trained to do the work. The Knox farm once had three milking cycles a day but had to cut back to two due to labor shortages. The Flood’s farm in Maine has not had labor problems because paper and textile mills that have closed in the area provided a labor glut, but George Flood said the possibility is always there. Flood cautiously believes that a farm the size of theirs is ideal. "It’s hard to tell. If labor becomes a very scarce item this size operation is definitely not the way to go…You need a lot of help." Farms this size sometimes find help from farmers who have decided to give up their own farms but want to continue doing farm work for a living.
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