This morning, during an international event in Amsterdam and two regional events in Heerenveen, The Netherlands, and Oyten, Germany, Alexander van der Lely, CEO of the Lely Group, revealed Lely’s latest Yellow Revolution.

As a first step in this new management approach, the Lely CEO revealed the Lely T4C InHerd: A platform with farm management tools for mobile devices.

Lely T4C InHerd is a modern farm management system that enables the farmer to check where his or her attention is needed most.

“The tools will help the farmer to act accurately by coaching him to do the right action, at the right time and in the right place. Farm results will improve by providing real-time insight into performances and cow health. This will result in a higher efficiency and more peace of mind,” the company stated.

With the Lely T4C InHerd mobile management system, farmers are more flexible and in control than ever before, it added.

“All dairy farmers, including large dairy farms, will benefit from the solutions that T4C InHerd offers. This is a really unique mobile system for organising the work flow among the staff and checking the progress on their farm. T4C InHerd has captured Lely’s best practices in terms of how to run a robotic farm with over 20 years of experience in this playing field and has been developed in close co-operation with its customers,” it added.

The company said more than 100 test farmers have evidenced that Lely T4C InHerd offers a clear overview of where actions are needed and monitors work progress and results continually. In addition, every farm with Lely Astronaut milking robots, whether Astronaut A2, Astronaut A3 or Astronaut A4, is able to use Lely T4C InHerd.

The Lely T4C InHerd platform, which Lely introduced today, starts with eight tools that can be downloaded immediately.

These tools are:

* FarmBeats Shows the actual herd and robot performance of the farm compared to th average for the last week.

* Today Shows which tasks need to be done based on scheduled tasks and measurements by different Lely products that are connected to T4C.

* Cow Provides data about reproduction, feed intake and milk production of individual cows.

* SystemToday Shows which checks and maintenance tasks a robot needs based on scheduled tasks and measurements by the sensors of the robot.

* Signals Warns if 10 cows have no milk time at one teat or the dead milk time exceeds the settings in T4C.

* HowTo Explains step by step how an action should be done. This is the farmers’ personal trainer on the job.

* FarmNotes Makes fast and efficient communication possible between InHerd users within one farm.

* FarmSetup Is the function by which user accounts can be created and edited for the different InHerd users on the farm.

Demo mode and three-month free trial

The Lely T4C InHerd tools are available at Google Play and the Apple App Store and feature a free demo mode which can be used unlimitedly.

The demo mode works with fictitious data. By activating a three-month free trial, farmers with a Lely Astronaut milking robot can try the tools in practice with their own T4C data. This functionality depends on the availability of the latest version of T4C 3.2.9.

Availability can be checked at www.lelyt4c.com, where more information about the tools can also be obtained.

“The tools are indispensable when it comes to an easy and fast optimisation of the daily farm operation. Therefore Lely’s T4C InHerd is a major step in the automation and optimisation of the dairy farming business. From now on farmers will be able to check their farm performance, plan actions and improve their results when and wherever they want to,” the company concluded.

Interviews and photos of today’s announcement to follow

By Cormac Farrelly