Robots take the hard work out of milking

By ROBERT WHITE

ROBERT Henningsen has 480 cows on the family farm just north of Mount Gambier. And he doesn’t milk any of them. Neither does anyone else.
Yet his milk production is better than ever before.
It may sound like a riddle but the answer is simple: robots!
There are seven milking robots at the farm and another is on order.
According to Robert, robots are the way of the future. Less stress for the operator and the cow, more efficient in-bail feeding and cows being milked when they want to be milked.
He says there are countless other benefits but the bottom line is that the bottom line is looking very encouraging.
The investment in the robots was around $2 million and Robert is confident he will recoup that cost in five years.
‘The real story is that the cows are giving more milk and there’s no stress for them or me. It works well as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
The Henningsens have been on the farm since 1983 when Robert’s parents, Des and Gladys made the move to the property.
Des had grown up on dairy farms in the Mount Gambier region and had followed in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps.
Robert was only 17 when the family moved to their current farm and they built up the herd to 270 cows which were milked in a 10 double-up shed.
But there was scope for a bigger operation and the family had to decide their next step. The farm could certainly milk more cows but the dairy wouldn’t cope.
Des was keen on a 50-unit rotary but Robert pushed for the robots. He had seen them operating on another farm south of Mount Gambier and was confident they were the future of dairying.
Des is still not sure they made the right decision but as far as Robert is concerned, there is no other way to milk cows.
In fact he is now planning to increase numbers to around 600 and a new robot has been ordered for the space that was left for future expansion in the shed.
Robert said it would have cost around $1.2 million for a 50-unit rotary shed.
“And then we would have needed to employ people to run it,” he said.
Robert estimated he could have been looking at a wages bill of up to $200,000 a year with a rotary. The savings in this area alone would pay for the difference between the robots and the rotary is less than five years.
Robert does employ part time staff to help out with the calves but he carries out the rest of the farm work himself.
If one of the robots has a problem, he gets an automatic warning and can return to the shed and fix it. In the meantime, the cows are still being milked in the remaining robots.
The robots were installed in June 2010 and Robert says some of his cows are doing up to 70 litres a day. Heifers are also exceeding expectations.
“It’s all about the cows being less stressed and milking when they want to be milked,” he said.
“They come into the shed and there’s no fighting for positions because there’s never any real rush. There is no pecking order in the herd so those cows that had been slow to come into the dairy in the past can now come in whenever they like.”
Robert said the cows were also fed their rations of grain over a longer period of time. Instead of getting the ration twice a day, the cows in the Henningsen shed are receiving their allocation in three or four feeds.
“I think this helps the cows digest the feed better. They can then return to the paddock and continue eating pasture much easier.”
Robert said it had not been difficult to train the cows to use the robots.
“It probably took about three weeks before some of them got used to what was going on. The heifers just follow the older cows,” he said.
“We did have a few teething problems when we first started,but that happens with most new technology. It seems to have sorted itself out now.”
The technology involved in the robots also allows Robert to check on each cow at the move of a computer mouse.
He can monitor any amount of information on each individual cow and an alert is sounded every time mastitis is indicated.
He can also monitor production per cow; can group them into age groups to check production levels; can easily check the best and worst performers … the amount of information is seemingly endless.
The computerised system will not allow a cow to be milked before it has had a five hour break.
“It really is the way of the future, especially for large herds,” Robert said.