On Tuesday (June 29), Lely Center Mullingar held one of five open days this week, on the farm of Tom McWalter, a new entrant to dairy farming.
Tom, who milks a herd of 134 Friesian cows through two Lely Astronaut A5 robots, welcomed farmers onto his farm just outside Milltown, Co. Galway.
Niall McGauran welcomed visitors to the farm and outlined what the open day would entail, which saw a number of speakers from the Lely Centre in Mullingar speak about all things robotic-milking.
To start off, Niall explained how the journey for farmers getting into robotic milking begins.
He said that he would go out to the farm himself and see first of all, whether both the farmer and farm are suitable for robotic milking, then if both those boxes were ticked, plans could be made to facilitate the move.
Niall warned that the robot will only milk your cows and give information about them – it won’t run your business, but it will free up more of your time.
This time, he said, can be spent looking at the information you get from the robot(s) to manage your cows better and get the best out of the herd, performance-wise.
Throughout the session, visitors got the chance to go to different stations around the farm, where talks were given on specific areas – such as designing a farmyard to incorporate robot(s), information about the robot itself and everything it offers, and grazing management.
The first station saw Liam Filan speak about what the Lely Astronaut A5 has to offer, and talk through how it works.
One point he made was that existing farmers, who had milked in conventional parlours previously and changed over to robots, had said that the robot was picking up on any mastitis issues two days before they would have detected it if they were milking in a parlour.
The information you get from the robot(s) was one of the key features Liam mentioned, saying that farmers who didn’t come from a dairy background and were going into milk, for example, found the information they were getting very useful and got them up to speed much faster.
Jordan Molloy was up next – she spoke about grazing management on robotic-milking systems and how it works.
One of the main talking points from the grazing side of robotic systems was the placement of water troughs on roadways and in particular, narrow roadways.
Jordan pointed out that cows shouldn’t have to travel far for water, advising no more of a distance than 150m between troughs.
The narrow roadways are for cow traffic only, with farmers generally having a wider roadway for machinery to travel down through the farm or breaks in the wire for tractors to go from field to field.
She also talked about the ABC system of grazing and how it operates.
One question farmers asked was: what was the failure rate for cows who didn’t adjust to the system and had to be to culled because of it? Jordan replied, saying the failure rate was about 1%, citing that at the last farm she was on all of the cows adjusted without problems, with none having to be culled.
Lastly, William Conlon finished out the session, talking about farmyard design for robotic milking systems, which saw him speak about farms that went down the greenfield site route and those farms that made use of existing sheds, such as Tom McWalter.
The question most farmers were curious about was the length of time it takes to get plans drawn up and getting the project in motion and completed.
William said it depends from farm to farm. He said the best thing you can do if you’re thinking about going down the robotic route is to give yourself as much time as possible to facilitate the move – advising 10-12 months of a timeframe and even longer in cases, with some farms taking up to 24 months to transition over.
However, he did note that projects have been completed in a much shorter space of time – but that requires everything to go right.
One such install which Agriland got the chance to see, took only six weeks to complete – a 10-unit parlour removed and replaced with a Lely Astronaut A5 in Co. Kilkenny early this year.
He finished by saying that the actual installation of the robot itself only takes a couple of days to complete.