During the week, Agriland got the chance to see a 44-bail rotary parlour in action in Co. Cork.

The new rotary, on the farm of Patrick O’Callaghan, is milking 300 cows.

Up until start-up in spring, Patrick was milking in a 20-unit parlour, that at peak was taking three hours to milk cows and wash up after.

Therefore, he decided it was time to look at his options and see how he could cut his milking time and have it that only one person would be needed for milking.

In his mind, the only suitable option for him and his farm was a rotary. Patrick shopped around before landing on a 44-bail GEA rotary parlour.

Nothing else, he felt, would be as efficient than a rotary for the number of cows he had.

The whole process of building what he has today started back in 2019. It came to fruition this spring when Patrick moved into the rotary in February.

Patrick’s goal of milking his herd of cows in less time and by one person has been a success thus far, with one person managing to get cows milked and wash up afterwards in roughly 90 minutes.

The rotary is of a high-spec, equipped with many of the bells and whistles associated with modern milking machines such as automatic cluster removers, feed-to-yield system and auto wash.

The only feature Patrick didn’t opt for was a cluster flush system. There is capacity to hold 22,000L split between two bulk tanks.

On every farm that is undergoing some kind of construction work, a lot of thought and a lot of deliberation in many cases can go into deciding where to build a parlour, cubicle or calf shed.

In Patrick’s case there was only place the rotary could go and it was in front of where the old parlour was. However, it wasn’t as straightforward as just getting in the rotary then and there.

A lot of work had to be done to get the site ready, with a lot of rock excavated to get the site level.

Although despite this, it would be well worth the hassle as the new rotary would be able to link up well with the original collecting yard and cubicle shed.

Patrick had, and has still, a circular collecting yard that feeds into the original parlour. Despite being the old parlour on the farm, the old milking facility is still being used.

Once cows head for milking and arrive into the collecting yard, they make their way through one side of the old parlour and into the new building where the rotary is.

Patrick said that they got in a mini digger last year to break out the concrete troughs that were in the old parlour so that cows could walk up and head towards the rotary that was once the way out of the old parlour.

Patrick joked that the cows, the first time they went up the old parlour to be milked in the rotary, turned into where the old trough was expecting to see ration in front of them.

The plan is to slat the pit in the old parlour, once the parlour is taken out, which Patrick said has found a new home and is just waiting to be taken out.

This will mean cows will have access to the entire floor area of the old milking parlour, with Patrick thinking about putting a backing gate at the back of it then, to keep the last 60-80 cows up close to the rotary.

Once cows are milked and make their way from the rotary, they head down the existing exit race which leads them into one of two sides of the existing cubicle shed.

On the day Agriland visited, cows had access to freshly cut grass in the shed, as grass on the grazing platform was getting tight.

Patrick said that from the get go, it was all about minimising building work and working with what was available to him which he did and which is working well for him.

He carried out as much work himself as he could such as the plumbing, and adding some finishing touches around the build to make the whole milking process and clean up after as efficient as possible.

Such as putting in flow channel where cows exit and tend to excrete a lot of dung near this area and having a slope down into the run off channel so that water isn’t holding on the concrete, as well making his own homemade deck near the exit of rotary to carry out tail painting or AI.

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Video: 44-bail rotary in action on 300-cow farm in Cork