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Veterinary Surgeon
Ian Cure
XLVets Practice
Lambert, Leonard & May
Installing a set of automatic milking machines
has saved father and son team Brian and
Mark Robinson around 35 hours per week
in labour. But it’s not just freed up more time
for them to spend with their families and get
ahead on other aspects of the business,
it’s also resulted in a healthier and more
productive herd.
Towards the end of 2011, Lancashire farmers
Brian and son Mark began looking at
upgrading the parlour at Cross Hill Farm,
at Treales. Amongst their options were
automatic milkers.
Mark explains: ‘We took a look at the
different makes of machine and visited other
farms which already had them. We needed
to either ‘rule them in or rule them out’.’
A key factor which made them choose to
go ‘robotic’ was that even with modern
manual machine choices, they would need
to employ another person to milk. And the
Robinsons wanted to do the milkings between
them - and still be able to take time off!
From the beginning, they involved their vet
Ian Cure from Lambert Leonard and May, in
the decision making process. Ian advised on
the different herd management strategies and
prepared the herd for the switch to an
automatic milking system.
In May 2012, a total of four DeLaval milking
units were installed at the farm, and the herd
was brought indoors all year round. With these
robotic milkers, it now only needs one person
to be around to run the farm at a weekend.
Herd management options
Ian explains: ‘There’s not just the actual
milking machine to consider when evaluating
robot systems. Farmers need to think about
whether to run a ‘free access’ system or a
‘guided’ one.
‘For example, guided systems involve a shed
design which incorporates sorting gates:
cows can either be milked first before gaining
access to the feed barrier where a complete
ration is fed, or alternatively the building can
be designed so they are fed before being
milked. This avoids the need to feed as much
concentrate, but careful monitoring of cow
milkings and health are needed.
‘The free access system, which the Robinsons
opted for, takes the pressure off: in these,
feed is the motivation to the cow to enter the
robot unit. A partial mixed ration is always
available, formulated to be 7 litres/cow
short of their requirement. So for the Robinson
herd, a maintenance ration to support
24litres/day/cow is fed. The cows then
receive the appropriate nutritional top-up
via feed in the robot. The Robinsons already
had out of parlour feeders - so these have
been included in the set-up as an extra way
of getting feed into the high yielders. With
this type of set-up, farmers need to check that
cows are visiting the unit, and go and fetch
them to it if needed. It’s also more expensive
on concentrate feed costs.’
WORKING
TOGETHER
FOR A HEALTHIER FUTURE...
15
LIVESTOCK MATTERS
THE ROBOT EVENT
Moving over to a robotic milking system
proves beneficial to farmers
Ian Cure and Mark Robinson
One of the four DeLavel Milking Units on farm