Benefits abound with robotic milkers

Four Fleurieu Peninsula farmers using robots made up a panel session at the recent DairySA Central Conference, with the aim of busting myths and misconceptions about using the technology, while also highlighting the benefits.

Nangkita Dairies' Jake Connor said what has surprised him the most was the positive impact that came from the cows' voluntary milking.

"The most powerful thing about robots is that it allows the cows to milk voluntary, so to see the herds' nature and thought process change, is so interesting to watch," he said.

"For the cow to milk when she wants to be milked, eat when she wants to eat, and not rely on us guessing what she wants - it's all contributing to production increases and improved health."

Mr Connor said they had seen a 15 per cent increase in production, as cows had gone from two milkings a day, to voluntarily milking on average 2.5 times a day.

"There is a physical production increase from a nutritional point of view, as we've been getting 15pc more pasture into our cows - that certainly helps financially."

Mr Connor said they have also had a 12pc increase in their fertility rates - a historic problem on-farm.

"We have had a 12pc increase in fertility two years in a row on our six-week calf rate," he said.

"This is significant for us as we have been a dairy farm that has struggled with fertility over a long period of time, and we have been using collars for over 20 years, capturing a lot of data, but with robots we saw major improvements right from the first season - I attribute it to the voluntary milking.

"We were concerned as the cows were milking harder, but it worked out better - one of the best things of going robotic."

Delamere farmer Michael Krichauff agreed, saying there were "massive flow-on affects" using robots when it came to cow health, with less lameness and any illnesses picked up immediately.

"Before we had robots, fertility was also difficult to quantify," he said.

"Now, we have so much more data and information available to us, so fertility is better due to that better animal health, but also heat detection is so much easier to capture.

"We have far more cows in-calf than we have ever had before.

"And with the collars and the robot information, we're picking up on animal health issues miles before the eye can see it."

Mr Krichauff 'busted the myth' that cows wouldn't voluntarily walk to the dairy.

"That's definitely not true," he said.

"It's all feed driven, and if you get it right, it's pretty easy to manage, but it does take a little while to learn.

"We use ABC grazing and a feed pad in our system, and we were concerned how that would look, especially now with no grass in the paddock.

"But we have managed to have exceptional cow flow, we haven't fetched any significant number of cows for three months now on our farm.

"The transition from TMR to grass was hard, but it is less of a challenge now than what it was before we had robots. In a short period of time, you learn how to allocate your grass.

"It has been so rewarding and our production has gone up."

Mr Connor agreed there were initial challenges to managing pastures, but the system enabled farmers to get more pasture into their cows, and ultimately get out more milk.

"If you are a good pasture manager, robots can make you an even greater one," he said.

"It is a different way of managing pastures, it's about having multiple grazing sections, moving cows through them, how feed allocations affect cow flow, and how weather has an impact.

"It's such a different dynamic to what you have been doing, but if you're a good pasture manager, and have a good understanding of your farm and the feed base of your cows, and you embrace that this is different, then it actually throws up a heaps of positives."

Another misconception was that robots could be considered too expensive for some farms.

"From a capital cost point of view, you are spending a lot of money, but dairy is a highly capital enterprise anyway," Mr Connor said.

"You're not investing in a heap of infrastructure, things that aren't earning you money.

"You are investing in the technology that's there to do the work for you - it helps to justify the cause."

Mr Connor said often robots were viewed favourably by financiers and were keen to partner with farms.

"So there's no harm in asking the question," he said.

Mount Compass dairyfarmer Ben McHugh advised those considering upgrading or building a new facility, that robots could often be more cost effective.

"Your plant doesn't need to be as big because the cows are voluntarily milking," he said.

Mr Krichauff said the benefits also went beyond reducing labor units.

"The only thing a robot does is put cups on cows, so from a financial point of view, they are literally taking a labour unit out," he said.

"But there are that many other benefits, production being one of them, also improved animal health, fertility, conception rates etc - that's all increasing behind the scenes and it all adds up."

Tooperang dairyfarmer Asher Jacobs also gave an insight into their recently-installed eight Lely milking robots, which properly came online about a fortnight ago.

With wife Jenny, father Warren and business partner Perrin Hicks, Asher said they were milking about 410 cows through them and while there had been some challenges, it was generally "going smoothly", aided by pre-training.

"We did about 2-3 weeks of pre-training, which helped get the cows ready for the robots," he said.

"By the second and third day, once they knew they were getting fed, they were a lot calmer.

"We've had to make a few edits to the yards, and we're still running around trying to promote cow flow.

"But we maybe only have about 1-2 per cent of cows now that need guidance."

There is currently about 10 robotic milking farms in SA.