Great Yorkshire Show 2019 preview: Robotic milking system paying dividends

The robot not only recognises and milks each individual cow when it chooses, but more than 200 pieces of data are recorded at every milking by the management programme.

Edward says: “The data has contributed towards the herd’s average somatic cell count falling from more than 200,000 cells/ml to a current 161,000 cells/ml by enabling us to pre-empt a mastitis incident and treat immediately.

“Previously in the parlour, mastitis would have had to manifest itself before it could have been identified. The system also automatically dumps antibiotic treated milk so we no longer have to rely on the red tail tape and be on alert to manually separate it.”

Herd fertility has also improved as a result of the robot continually analysing cow movement and rumination.

Edward says: “We estimate the robot to achieve a 95 per cent accuracy level and consequently have been able to improve average conception, with the heifer first service conception rate increasing from 45 per cent to 95 per cent.

"As all our heifers are served with sexed semen for heifer replacement purposes and we are now able to serve our cows with British Blue resulting in an added value calf.”

Accuracy

Nutrition has also come under the microscope.

Edward says: “The system has enabled us to finely tune each animal’s diet. We swapped a TMR ration for a simple system featuring a sole ad-lib silage diet, complemented with concentrate from the robots and out of parlour feeders.

“The change has helped us to save four hours a day feeding and allowed us to feed bespoke diets for each animal, according to stage of lactation and yield,” says Edward.

“The milking herd has free access to paddocks surrounding the farm, but some stay in, particularly in extreme weather conditions, because they get all the feed they need indoors and of course they do not actually like the rain or extreme heat.

“Introducing five robots did present anticipated teething problems, but they were not insurmountable.

“Now we have a system which runs smoothly and leaves more time for us to concentrate on the business, including our doorstop milk delivery business and our new gelateria and cafe at Beech Grove Farm, which we launched 12 months ago.”