Robotic milking has everyone animated
DeLaval have also entered the market, with their voluntary milking system, recently launched in Cork by Tom Harte Farm Services.
Nearly 700 visitors had a preview of the VMS system at the Tom Harte dealership, before it too was displayed at the Ploughing.
Interest in robot milking is high, with farmers at the Ploughing queuing up, ten-deep, to look at the Lely display. Some of this is curiosity, but with the impending abolition of quota, in 2015, robotic milking is relevant for farmers assessing their development options.
Expansion of milk production is not possible on many farms, particularly where grazing platforms are fully stocked with dairy cows.
Similarly, expansion of dairy production in conventional format can be costly. It’s not simply a case of adding a few units onto the milking parlour, with a few more cow cubicles to match.
Bringing the farm to a higher production platform can require investment in housing, milking facilities, milk-tank storage, silage storage, fencing and water infrastructure.
There are hidden expansion costs, such as higher disease-control and vaccination programmes, increased likelihood of lameness, and the cost of rearing additional stock to the point where they join the herd.
At the 2013 Teagasc open day, experts said farmers should do their own sums on whether it is worthwhile expanding, or if it would be better to make their existing system more efficient.
I chatted with DeLaval Ireland sales director, Steve Sefton, and he was enthusiastic about the future of robot milking in Ireland.
Although the current level of robotic milking in Ireland is negligible, on less than 1% of dairy farms, the potential in Ireland is high.
DeLaval has installed more than 10,000 automated milking units worldwide.
But automated milking facilities have not been popular with Irish dairy farmers, for a number of reasons.
Most have dealt with near-static milk quotas over the past three decades.
Development of the milking parlours of the early 1980s has been incremental, typically involving additions of milking units, or automated cluster removers.
But advancement in technology has opened up the opportunity to integrate robotic milking into a grazing system, with the use of auto-drafting gates.
With farmers facing a choice of expanding or becoming more efficient, it is interesting that automated milking facilities can help in both cases.
For those who want to become more efficient, robot technology will allow farmers cut down on time spent milking cows — but the real advantage is in milk quality.
High milk quality is an inherent advantage from robotic milking systems — with most systems pre-alerting the dairy farmer to falling milk quality, long before such signs are visible.
For example, the DeLaval unit offers MDI (mastitis-detection index) early warning of potential mastitis cases. Or, the robot can be equipped with a cell-count unit. The advantage of the MDI function is that mastitis can be detected before it impacts on cell count.
The true power of robot technology is that it can record a host of performance indicators, such as a drop in milk yield per quarter, an increase in milk conductivity, a contamination of milk with blood, a change in the colour of milk, a change in milking time — and alert the farmer.
For those looking to expand in dairying, it is important to remember that Ireland’s advantage is the ability to produce milk from grazed grass.
For farmers already reaching production capacity on existing grazing platforms, robotic milking can open up the opportunity for expanding milk production from grazed grass on outside land parcels.
Teagasc are undertaking research on robotic milking to an Irish grazing system, and it will be interesting to see how that progresses.
