Dairy Focus: Robotic milking complementing a tillage operation

For this week’s Dairy Focus, Agriland made the trip to Co. Laois to meet with James Brennan on his dairy farm in Barrowhouse.

James farms alongside his father and two uncles and together they are milking 154 cows on two V300 DeLaval robots. They also have a tillage operation.

The farm is now in its fourth year of milk production, having previously been a tillage and beef operation.

Robotic milking

During the 1970s, 80s and 90s, the focus on the farm was sugar beet production, until quotas went in the mid-2000s.

After this the focus was placed more on beef production, which went well for a while.

Converting to dairy had been looked at before, but the timing wasn’t quite right. Then in 2020, things set into motion.

As the tillage operation was to remain, robotic milking was looked at, as it gave the opportunity to combine tillage and dairy.

Tillage and dairy

154 cows are being milked on the farm, with the majority of the cows consisting of high economic breeding index (EBI) Holstein Friesian-cross cows.

This dairy farm’s focus is very much on getting the most out of grass; being a dry farm means that cows can be grazed early and late into the year.

All cows are calved in the spring, with some of the later-calving cows milking through the winter.

Although calving cows in the autumn in a robotic system might make sense, the focus in the autumn for this farm is on getting crops planted.

James said that the combination of tillage and robotic dairying offers great flexibility. It allows for the harvesting or sowing of crops to continue and relieves pressure to get back to milking.

“If we didn’t have the option of the robot, we probably wouldn’t be milking cows,” he said.

The cows are currently all bedded on straw and although cubicles may be built in time, there is currently no rush to do so, according to James.

Having tillage crops means that a large amount of farmyard manure or dung is very useful for the crops.

Selection

A lot of research was put into the robots and which brand would be used.

“Being tillage farmers, we are into our machinery or into our metal. When it came down to robots we spent months looking at different options,” James said.

“It really came down to two in the end, from a dealer back-up point of view.

“We went more towards the DeLaval initially down to build quality, stainless steel and it just looks solid and strong.

“We saw robots that were on farms 10 years and still looked like [they did] the day they went in.”

Continuing, he said: “Then when we looked at the more technical end. The V300 had been introduced the year before we started and there was a lot of new technology in it.

“The 3D camera was a big draw for us. I also liked the way that only cows that can go into the box [are] cows with milking permission – there is no cow without milking permission that ends up in the robot.

“The DeLaval was also able to milk more cows than any other robot/day on the market and the more we looked at it, the more we liked it.”

Speaking about the dealer back-up service, James said: “We got a good few recommendations about Pratts in Abbeyleix, that they had a very good back-up service and were easy to deal with.

“We went with them and have been happy with everything so far.

“The service man Simon Cantwell has been excellent, he’s always on call and offers great advice. I couldn’t speak more highly of him and how good he has been to us.”

V300

Having the tillage enterprise means that someone isn’t around the yard all the time, which means that the Brennans rely heavily on the information provided by the robots.

“You can’t look at every cow coming in, because you just don’t have the time – but there is a world of information available,” James said.

“More information than you would probably ever need,” he added.

Continuing, the farmer said: “We have the mastitis detection system, which monitors the conductivity of the milk – so if the conductivity of the milk rises it will be flagged straight away.

“Which means we are able to catch cases very early. We are lucky that we haven’t had many cases and I’d say the way the robots operate help with that.

“You also have all the information available on daily milking and production,” he added.

“It also allows you look at individual cows and easily pick out poor performers or slow milkers.”

Also installed on the robots is a body condition score (BCS) camera, which monitors the cows and James said this is very useful in the second half of the year heading towards drying-off.

Reproductive management systems can be added to the V300 robots and James said that they will likely install this in the near future.

Grazing

Cows start calving in late-January and the aim is to get cows to grass in early February, with grazing coming to an end in early December.

Although weather affected many other farms this year, cows continued to head to grass on this farm.

Due the farm being dry, grass has to be maximised early and late in the year. Although the winters are short, silage feeding takes place during dry periods in the summer.

Last summer cows were fed a total mixed ration (TMR) for six weeks in paddocks, as grass was not in their diet.

The cows are grazed on an A,B,C grazing system, with the furthest walk being around 500m.

Cow type

In-calf heifers were purchased in the autumn of 2019, ahead of starting milk production in spring 2021.

An 80% Holstein and 20% Friesian was the cow type that the Brennans looked for, but some more crossbred cows and some more Holstein-type cows were also purchased.

The aim is a 6,000L cow that will produce in excess of 500kg of milk solids from 1t of meal. Last year 520kg of milk solids was achieved from 1.4t of meal as due to drought conditions extra meal was fed.

Being in a robotic system hasn’t changed the cow type, but has placed more of a focus on some traits such as udder conformation, teat placement and temperament.

James said that this year, a focus has been placed on trying to increase protein percentages and increase the health traits in the cows.