PHOTO: MILKING EDGE
PHOTO: MILKING EDGE
MILKING SYSTEMS ▶▶▶
28 AMS farms nominated themselves to be monitored monthly. The project results provide farmers with a better un- derstanding of what is achievable under AMS operation. The KPIs allow farmers to benchmark farm, cow and robot perfor- mance. Of the participating farmers, 19 producers are from Australia and nine other farmers are from New Zealand, Ireland, Chile and Argentina. “This benchmark allows farmers to compare and identify steps to improve,” says Dr Lyons. “We are now building a tool that will allow farmers to understand what is achievable with AMS, financially and physically. It should help them to opti- mise their performance with a robotic milking system on the farm. They get good insights and will be able to make better decisions.” Research has indicated that farmers using AMS can improve the utilisation of their robots, harvest more milk and increase their labour efficiency. “And if a farmer can play with the number of cows per robot and harvest more milk, we think that the farm can become more profitable,” Dr Lyons says. There are about 5,200 dairy farmers in Australia, of which close to 50 have invested in AMS, almost 1%. “These numbers are higher than in New Zealand or some countries in South America but lower than the more developed markets in North America or Europe,” says Dr Lyons. “In Europe, in coun- tries like Denmark, Sweden or the Netherlands, around 20–25% of farms use AMS.”
There are about 5,200 dairy farmers in Aus- tralia, of which close to 50 have invested in AMS.
Robotic milking top 5 But it looks like Australia is catching up. “Although we are cur- rently sitting at less than 1%, we are seeing that the adoption of AMS continues,” Dr Lyons says. “From a recent survey we learned that 70% of farmers would consider investing in AMS as an option, when investing in a new dairy. And 60% of Australian dairy farmers think that robotic milking is going to be one of the top 5 technologies being adopted in the next ten years.
Using a robotic milking system frees up labour for other milking-related tasks.
“The biggest advantage of using a robotic milking system is that it frees up labour for other milking-related tasks,” Dr Lyons says. “If you look at the average dairy farm, about 50– 60% of time spent on the farm consists of milking cows. It is a very repetitive task. And besides freeing up labour, the robot can also be a data-collecting platform.” Every time a cow visits the robot, roughly 120 measurements are taken by the system. “Those measurements can relate to the cow’s behaviour, the production, the milking time. You can use all those data to make better decisions. That is part of the work we try to do with our project,” Dr Lyons says. Currently in Australia the average farm with an AMS has four robots, but the number of robots on farms varies between two and 16. “So it is difficult to say what it would cost a farm- er to invest in AMS,” Dr Lyons emphasises. “Farmers also have extra options such as heat-detection devices and milk-testing equipment. There are different things that may come into play for the final investments.” And farmers can have different reasons for investing in a ro- botic system, says Dr Lyons. “Do they want to reduce the number of labour units? Are they looking at improving the in- formation they get about their cows to make better deci- sions? Do they want to milk the cows more often and achieve an increase in production? Robotic milking is the same as any other technology – a tool for the farmer. At the end of the day, it is up to the farmer how he or she will use this tool.”
8 ▶DAIRY GLOBAL | Volume 7, No. 5, 2020
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