Bedding on sand had stopped one North Yorkshire dairy from investing in robotic slurry handling, until Lely introduced a new sand-flushing system
Installing robotic slurry collectors has saved two hours daily at one family farm in North Yorkshire.
Three Lely Discovery C2 collectors were purchased at the 290-cow dairy unit at Carlton Dairy as part of a transition to robotic milking, with five Lely A5 robots replacing a 18/36 swingover parlour.
They were the first collectors with sand-flushing capabilities to be installed on a farm in the UK.
John Throup manages the dairy enterprise at his family’s 1,200-acre mixed farm, where he milks 254 Holsteins, supplying Arla alongside his uncle, Ben, and cousin, James.
Five Lely A5 robots were retrofitted into a shed comprising 266 sand-bedded cubicles in July.
John said the parlour was 30 years old and required replacing and they felt robots offered friendly working hours and would allow them to move away from ‘peak labour loading’ at unsociable hours when milking.
Robotic manure collectors seemed like a logical combination.
“Because the cows don’t leave the shed, we had to come up with a solution to clean it while it was full of cows,” John explains.
John says the new sand option encouraged him to purchase the slurry robots.
He explains: “We wanted to keep the cows bedded on sand and I don’t like the waves of muck created by automatic scrapers. One of the reasons I didn’t put robots in sooner is because I hadn’t worked out how to scrape the shed out until now.”
The sand option is now available on new machines and can be retrofitted on existing C1 and C2 models. The rear water bag is modified to include a pressure-release valve. Once the Collector is connected to the water-filling station, the valve flushes sediment from inside the unit. Once pressure drops, the valve closes, allowing the tank to be filled with water ready for cleaning with front and rear nozzles able to spray controlled amounts of water to aid floor cleaning.
It means farmers using the sand option are not required to wash out the internal body of the machine regularly to remove sediment.
Move to robots
At Carlton Dairy, each robot is programmed to complete 4-6 routes daily. Each one runs for 60% of the day (14.4 hours) and only spends 40% of charging with the newer C2 model boasting an extended runtime by five hours compared to its predecessor.
Routes can be tailored to the farm’s daily routines through a navigation app and the robot can stopped or sent back to its station if it is impeding cow flow or farm traffic.
John explains: “The robots don’t clean the feed passage for 3-4 hours after morning feeding so cows can feed without the robot disturbing them.”
Installation
The installation process took five days and involved mapping the shed and establishing routes, as well as fitting the docking stations where the robots wirelessly charge, dump slurry and refill with water simultaneously to save time.
The Throups did the building work themselves and had to dig a slurry channel across the middle of the shed for the docking stations so muck could be unloaded. A stirrer and pump then shift the slurry to a nearby clay-lined lagoon.
“We put a V channel in. The reason for that is as the slurry gets closer to the bottom, it speeds up the flow,” adds John.
Boards had to be fitted onto gates eight inches off the floor, so the collector had something to grip against, but these have handles and can be easily removed.
Benefits and future
Previously, sheds were scraped out with a skid steer, which took two hours, but the robots have negated the need for manual scraping inside the shed.
John cleans the robots’ sensors just twice weekly, as advised, to avoid them colliding with obstacles. This takes just ten minutes to complete on all three Collectors.
The robots have only been used since August, and while it is still too early to say if they have improved foot health, John says the environment and cows’ feet are ‘definitely cleaner.’
“The biggest payback you can have are fewer feet issues because that contributes to more milk [and better fertility].”
Further labour savings have been made thanks to the robotic milking machines, too. Previously, it took two members of staff 3.5 hours at each end of the day to milk and wash down (5.30-9am and 3.30-7pm). An extra pair of hands was required to move cows, scrape and clean beds.
Now, one person manages the milking cows. “Usually, this involves collecting cows that haven’t been milked, tending to freshly calved cows and washing the machines,” explains John.
Milk yield has already increased from 28kg to 36kg, with cows averaging 3.4 visits daily.
The building has been designed with expansion in mind. There is room for a sixth robot to be added in the next year. This will take the Throups up to milking 300-320 cows.
John says one of the biggest benefits has been the streamlining of data as a result of the Horizon app. This has made information more accessible and easier to find.
“My biggest headache before the robots were installed was sifting through data from different various software. We had heat detection collars, parlour software and a herd software programme. Now the software talks to each other and is in one place.
“For example, if a cow is unwell, I would have previously had to look at the heat detection app to check rumination, then look at the parlour software to check that cow’s conductivity and milk yield, before looking at our herd’s software to see where she is in lactation.
“With Horizon, the cow is flagged up on a list, and all that information is available at the click of a button.”