Parlour Option

Which parlour to milk 200 cows an hour

  • 32/64 with feeders

    Votes: 17 23.3%
  • 32/64 with basic fast exit

    Votes: 8 11.0%
  • 50/60 point rotary.

    Votes: 48 65.8%

  • Total voters
    73

Bald Rick

Moderator
Livestock Farmer
Location
Anglesey
How do you get on with yours? Do you have 2 or 3 people on it?

2 in the parlour then AM TMR guy fetches cows whilst mixing and PM me fetching/cleaning beds/bedding up etc.
We are strongly considering automating the wiper side of things to just leave a cupper on

Milfos/GEA 64 point - 1 "on" stall, 3 "off" and comfortably doing 330+ per hour on 9 minute rotation. No one really minds milking for a couple of hours

Welcome to come & have a look. PM me if interested
 

Dead Rabbits

Member
Location
'Merica
Something to consider with a rotary as well is the number of jobs you can do with it. We give all vaccines, injections, ear tagging, sorting, AI and heat detection. Can’t imagine going back to using a head gate
 

DairyGrazing

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North West
2 in the parlour then AM TMR guy fetches cows whilst mixing and PM me fetching/cleaning beds/bedding up etc.
We are strongly considering automating the wiper side of things to just leave a cupper on

Milfos/GEA 64 point - 1 "on" stall, 3 "off" and comfortably doing 330+ per hour on 9 minute rotation. No one really minds milking for a couple of hours

Welcome to come & have a look. PM me if interested
Thank you, I’ll take you up on that once the maize in and we’ve silaged.
 

kiwi pom

Member
Location
canterbury NZ
460 milking depending on culling through the summer. Keen to start milking at 3pm and have everyone in their cars leaving by 5.30pm. So probably will need to milk more than 200/hr.
Have you asked your staff what they think?
Personally I think if you're milking that many and want them done quickly because staff have other duties, I'd go rotary.
If you're expanding the herd at what point would it be better to run a smaller parlour for more hours and just have staff milking and nothing else?
 
2 in the parlour then AM TMR guy fetches cows whilst mixing and PM me fetching/cleaning beds/bedding up etc.
We are strongly considering automating the wiper side of things to just leave a cupper on

Milfos/GEA 64 point - 1 "on" stall, 3 "off" and comfortably doing 330+ per hour on 9 minute rotation. No one really minds milking for a couple of hours

Welcome to come & have a look. PM me if interested
Is there a commercial automated wiper for a rotary then?
 
We're nearly at the same position. Put in a 30/60 for 400 cows....now at 480, heading for 520 next year. Morning mklkings 3.5 hrs. Spot rates of 200/hr. But by the time you've mucked about with the cronk group, treated etc. Time soon runs away.
If we went rotary (50/60 point) then numbers could climb up comfortably to 700+.
That sounds very familiar. We put in our 32:64 for 400 but very quickly found ourselves milking 550+.

We've since eased back to 520 which is 16 rows plus half a dozen in a red group. 16 rows feels like a breeze compared with 18/19, those extra rows were always really painful and added a lot or time. I don't plan on upping numbers without extending the parlour first
 
Location
West Wales
We’ll put 300ish through a 16:32 this autumn which will be plenty long enough.

the first 10% of the shed to fit a rotary in is sat on my fabricators yard ready to be welded up. Likely looking at 6-7 years before we’re in a position for the parlour but attempting to do things as we can now.

for me as less people want to milk it make sense to have something that’s easy to add automation onto. Also much easier to keep an operator that stands still warm, cold, fed, clean etc than one that moves around the whole pit. We’re competing in a narrowing labour market and anything we can do to make things more attractive is a must.
 

Chimera

Member
Location
North Wales
That sounds very familiar. We put in our 32:64 for 400 but very quickly found ourselves milking 550+.

We've since eased back to 520 which is 16 rows plus half a dozen in a red group. 16 rows feels like a breeze compared with 18/19, those extra rows were always really painful and added a lot or time. I don't plan on upping numbers without extending the parlour first
Unfortunately, easing back isn't an option for us with new commiments. In reality, within 2 yrs something's going to have to give.
Options I see are:
a) rotary
b) 2nd parlour(maybe as a seperate herd at tother end of farm) ( more staff)
c) have a OAD spring block to milk mid morning. (More staff)
 

NoParticularPattern

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Yorkshire
We are just about to (she says, having been told “3 weeks away” for at least the last 3 months) start milking through a 60pt rotary from a 27:54 herringbone (previously 22:44 but extended 5 years ago due to numbers). We milk 700 and milking is an absolute marathon not to mention the length of the pit being an absolute killer when you’ve walked up and down it a few hundred times. Should probably have gone for a larger rotary for our cow numbers, but the extra cost and the extra requirement for staff didn’t make for the most economical picture. Should make milking much more bearable and still only need the 3 (with extras as and when they can be bothered). We considered all sorts from almost everyone but none really added up speed/cost wise in comparison with the Pearson rotary.
 

vantage

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Pembs
We are just about to (she says, having been told “3 weeks away” for at least the last 3 months) start milking through a 60pt rotary from a 27:54 herringbone (previously 22:44 but extended 5 years ago due to numbers). We milk 700 and milking is an absolute marathon not to mention the length of the pit being an absolute killer when you’ve walked up and down it a few hundred times. Should probably have gone for a larger rotary for our cow numbers, but the extra cost and the extra requirement for staff didn’t make for the most economical picture. Should make milking much more bearable and still only need the 3 (with extras as and when they can be bothered). We considered all sorts from almost everyone but none really added up speed/cost wise in comparison with the Pearson rotary.
60point, 700 cows , sounds ideal!
Just don’t go expanding to 2500 and have the 60 pointer going almost every hour of the day!
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 77 43.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 62 35.0%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 28 15.8%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 4 2.3%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,286
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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