@Bald Rick Can we have an update?
Was it the right choice?
Has it improved your teams lifestyle?
Staff happy? Son Happy?
What would you Change, what are running costs like?
This was an exceptional thread!
Yeah.
Undoubtedly the right choice once we’d gone beyond 5 robots as it’s allowed the herd to grow rapidly and critically the swop was allowed to go through under the sustainable grant scheme .. probably because we employ a lot more staff than the original application specified and there is nothing grant givers like better than employment.
Biggest error we made was trying to do our own silage making rather than getting to grips with the new system so took the eyes off the ball. In time I suspect we may return to doing our own cutting etc but for the foreseeable it’s contractors for most of the field work.
In common with most of us, staff is an ongoing issue but slowly we are getting a core team of permanents and reliefs but there is always something to worry about and the latest is bactoscans.
Running costs per cow are much less than robots in terms of power but water use (mainly borehole thankfully) is much greater. I think on a per cow basis, chemicals are similar
Think the only change would be better way of cleaning the return race than having to manually scrape.
Just one major job left - to fit a roller door
By the end of this year, we will be a max cow numbers for current infrastructure as we have a lot of heifers in the wings with 53 due to calve in May alone