FOTO: PHOTO: DAIRYMASTER
PHOTO’S: DAIRYMASTER
MILKING EQUIPMENT ▶▶▶
“The future is automation of the carousel”
Less time in the milking parlour means healthier cows, less pressure on milkers and more efficient dairy farming. This can be achieved by automation of the conventional carousel to control the speed and to supply real time cow data. “We can reduce milking time by 20% to 30% and improve animal welfare at the same time,” says Rutger Schut from Europe Dairy Systems.
BY EMMY KOELEMAN R
Rutger Schut: “It is all about using real time cow or herd data, which allows the farm- er to react much quicker to ani- mal anomalies.”
utger Schut is the CEO of Europe Dairy Systems and the main distributor in Europe for the Irish company Dairymaster, known for its high-tech milking solu- tions, it also produces feeding equipment, health
and fertility monitoring systems, manure scrapers and milk cooling tanks. “The use of cow data to make dairy farming and the milking process more efficient is getting more and more important for dairy farmers around the world, reflected in the number of sensors launched over the last few years and the dashboards and management software programmes associated with them that are available to farmers. These sys- tems are getting more reliable and can help farmers improve profit, reduce working time, reduce veterinary costs and
improve job satisfaction for example,” explains Schut. “Data is the future of milking. It is all about using real time cow or herd data, which allows the farmer to react much quicker to animal anomalies. This in turn will lead to a reduction of the production price of milk. And the latter is key in times where milk prices do not reach € 0.35 per litre. The low milk price is forcing farmers to measure more, react quicker and make better decisions. Dairymaster’s new Mission Control provides farmers with real-time performance indicators on the cow and herd, including attachment time, carousel downtimes, cow throughput, expected end of milking time, the status of the milk tank, remaining feed quantity, and animal health. This is the next step in data gathering and efficiency and we therefore put our product development on automation of carousel milking parlours.”
Control of platform speed Efficiency in dairy farming is in focus because of a number of things, explains Schut. “Farmers struggle to find (skilled) milk- ers and the current milk prices challenge farmers to work more efficient to still make money from their cows. We therefore want to focus on making carousel milking parlours (known to milk many cows per hour) even more efficient, less reliant on manual work and equipped to observe cows better and react quicker. For us, that is the future of milking.” But automation of a conventional milking parlour such as a carousel doesn’t hap- pen overnight and involves different aspects to consider and implement to make it work. According to Schut, Mission
10 ▶DAIRY GLOBAL | Volume 6, No. 2, 2019
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