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Trevor Mills pleased with robotic milking.
MANY DAIRY farmers in the Gippsland region of Victoria, Australia, are caught in the same position as Trevor Mills a year ago. He was grappling with issues of farm scale on his 180-cow unit, trying to balance a need to increase the flexibility of his time against the economic realities of volatile milk returns and labour costs.
“We had done the maths on our options, including share farming, leasing or employing labour. Unfortunately none of it really added up to leave enough in it for us as owners,” he says.
Add the complications of health issues, and it was clear the choices were narrowing to possibly even having to exit dairying altogether, not a prospect he or his wife Anne-Marie were keen on.
“I had never seriously considered a robotic milker as an option, thinking that was more something the next generation could consider, but if we were going to stay on the farm, we did not have a lot of viable options open, and robotics was one of the most obvious.”
His decision coincided with the launch of the WestfaliaSurge MIone robotic milker in Australia. Mills acknowledges he was cautious about becoming the test farm for the technology, but after six months is starting to enjoy the flexibility and insights the system delivers.
The MIone is not the first robotic system developed, but Mills liked its configuration. He opted for a system with three ‘boxes’ and appreciated a layout with cow access on one side and easy operator access on the other. He also liked the capacity of the MIone to accept additional boxes for cows without having to buy a lot more technology to power and manage those additions.
A key point of difference for the MIone system is a single robotic arm that moves between the boxes to work with a 3D camera. The camera coordinates the position of individual teats and determines where to place the cups at the start of milking. It guides the teat cups on the milking rack to the cow’s teats
The camera’s monitoring provides a more human-like response to unexpected events, like cups being kicked off, with a rapid movement back to the problem box to correct the problem.
Mills spent the first six months getting himself and his herd used to the system, and is starting to see how his herd are responding to the freedom choosing their own milking times brings them and him.
“We would have the majority of cows, about 75%, milking twice a day, and about 15 cows on once a day, with the rest three to fourtimes a day.”
He has noticed the cows that are limiting themselves to once a day are only producing about 15L a day at spring peak, but when offering themselves twice a day that jumps to 22-25L.
“I am starting to build a picture of performance, and we will make some decisions at the end of the season about what we will do with those once a day cows.”
Meantime his top cows that produce over 40L being milked three times a day will sometimes leap to 50L when they come in for a forth milking over a 24 hour period.
Overall he believes production has not suffered much, and the MIone’s capacity for recording means he is getting a better profile on his herd’s health.
“Conductivity testing highlights those cows that are getting mastitis, and the MIone will separate them out to check. Identifying and treating cows is that much simpler. Lameness is also reduced because the cows are coming in at their own time and own pace.”
His herd is registering a bulk somatic cell count of 150,000 this season.
The farm has been configured for eight hour grazing, with three laneways with drafting gates to control cow movements.
Mills says after 17 years of conventional milking it has taken him some time to get his mind around accepting that cows will determine the milking period. “I have learned it’s sometimes better to just leave the machine and the cows to it, and walk away.”
A text alert system provides him with updates on any technical issues, and these have proven to be relatively easily fixed in the early stages of operation.
GEA FT sales engineer Brian Monteith says most new milking systems installed in Europe are now robotic systems, with a number of five box MIone systems operating in the UK and Europe.
“Like Trevor the motivation there has been primarily labour availability and getting the freedom to do other work in the business.”
Being solo on the farm, Mills says he now appreciates not having to interrupt another job at the conventional milking time, and is starting to enjoy the shift in perspective and time management the MIone brings.
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