The first robotic rotary in the southern hemisphere has transformed a family-run farm in Australia. Chris McCullough reports.
NEW technology in the form of a fully robotic rotary parlour is making light work of milking 750 cows twice a day on Paul Smiths farm in Mepunga, based on the Great Ocean Road in south west Victoria.
Mr Smith has been working on the farm for over 30 years. He left school at 15 years old to work for his father, and took over the running of the farm 10 years ago with his wife Marsha; they now lease it from his parents.
Mr Smith says: We are currently milking around 750 cows, 90% of which are Holsteins, twice a day on a full pasture-based system. The cows are producing about 8,000 litres on a 300-day lactation and about 600kg total milk solids.
The cows were previously milked via a manual 50-cow rotary, which had been installed in 1998.
However, this meant milking was taking up a lot of time and required considerable labour input, so in 2022 the decision was made to invest in a new state of the art milking system.
Mr Smith says: Last October, we installed a GEA Dairy Pro Q, which is a fully robotic rotary dairy. It is the first of its kind in the southern hemisphere.
Our system incorporates 40 GEA milking robots with room to install another 10 if needed. It is working fantastically well and we are extremely happy with it.
There are about 60 of these systems in use worldwide, but ours is the only one on a full time batch milking pasture-based system. In reality it is just a normal rotary dairy with the added benefit of robot technology.
We have gone from manually milking 750 cows twice a day to babysitting a machine that does it for you. Plus you get all the data that robot technology can provide to you. It will comfortably milk over 200 cows per hour and take all the labour and stress away with it.
The cows are pasture-based and remain outdoors in one single milking group all year long.
Mr Smith says: Grass is our cheapest and best feed. We also feed a ration on the platform in the dairy, which is a mixture of crushed barley, corn and canola along with some mineral supplements.
When the cows are milked, they walk out of the dairy straight into a large feed pad where there will be up to 40 sliced bales of pasture silage to snack on. After that, they head off to the paddock.
With the change to robotic milking, Mr Smith says he is putting more emphasis on robot ready udders when choosing his bulls.
However, he adds the only other traits he is interested in are those that boost foot health and the ability of his cows to consume large quantities of grass to convert into milk.
He says: "As far as I am concerned, I need cows with strong feet and legs as we walk our cows up to five kilometres each way a day.
And they need a big wide mouth to shovel as much grass in as they can.
These are the traits my father believed in and I believe they have served us well.
I think if you build a strong chassis that vehicle will last you a long time.
Cows are bred to AI from the beginning of April for six weeks, before running with bulls for another six weeks.
Mr Smith says: Then, any cow we did not get in calf, we do a six week joining in mid-November as a second chance and to give us some fresh cows over the summer when I am running on low numbers.
He has no plans to expand his operation in the future. Instead, he wants to fine-tune his system to allow him more time with family.
As for the problems associated with milking cows in Australia, he admits issues with labour availability is crippling the industry.
Although we have excellent long-term employees, dairy farmers here generally find it almost impossible to find local labour as the younger generation are not interested in manual labour jobs anymore, says Mr Smith.
I think that is why we may have to think of making the dairy industry more attractive in the future. The use of milking robots and smarter machinery may be the only way to attract the younger generation back to our farms.
51AV视频facts
- As well as Mr Smith there are two additional full-time members of staff
- In the past the farm has employed backpackers for relief milking but the installation of the new parlour means these extra staff may not be needed in the future
- Milk is sold to Coles supermarket and has been achieving record prices of about AUS$10 per kg (5.41/kg) of milk solids or AUS$0.70 per litre (38ppl), but, like everywhere else, the costs have risen as well
