Picture: John Owen of Gelli Aur with the live webcam link
Dairy farmers had the chance to gain a live, warts-and-all assessment of the practicalities of automatic milking at this year's Dairy Event - via a webcam link to a leading Welsh college evaluating the system, plus on-stand comment from the farm manager on experiences so far.
Installed last November at Gelli Aur College, Carmarthenshire, as part of a project to assess whether automatic milking can free up time so smaller herd owners can develop additional sources of income, the system uses Fullwood's Merlin milking system, linked to Crystal herd management software to monitor individual cow performance via pedometers. The project is part-funded by the Welsh Development Agency.
Visitors to Fullwood's stand were able to view the herd being milked by Merlin via the college's website, on a 42 inch plasma screen. A tandem PC link of the Crystal software displayed latest data on individual cows' udder health, milk yield and activity as they entered the automatic station to be milked.
Over the nine months the system has been running, Gelli Aur's farm manager, John Owen, says a key benefit has been a significant reduction in time spent on herd management.
Currently, it takes just three and three quarter hours per day to feed, check and clean the milking station and cow accommodation for the 50-strong herd - a figure which he believes is substantially lower than that for a similar-sized, conventionally-milked herd.
In addition, activity monitoring of individual cows, tracked via the
pedometers, is used to help the college pinpoint cows in oestrous. "If
there is an increase in cow mobility we're much more likely to take notice of that animal and ascertain whether she's bulling," explains Mr Owen. "Nine times out of 10 she is."
Current average yield for the automatically-milked herd, which contains a high percentage of heifers, is 9,000 litres per head. That is based on an average of 2.5 milkings per cow per day. The goal is for 11,000 litres per cow from a 60-70 cow herd, with 50 animals in milk at any one time.
"The cows are performing very well. We're very pleased with the system. There is potential for robotic milking," John Owen adds.
