Robotic milking

[upnortheast]

Years ago the vet was here doing some cow jobs. As the cows went out of the parlour a spray came from above the door. I could see the vet was puzzled as to what was happening. At the end of the visit he asks how that worked. Answer - Wife with a stirrup pump

 

[upnortheast]

Needap

Been puzzling all night. What does it stand for ?

 

[Spear]

Been puzzling all night. What does it stand for ?

Means toilet stop.

Need a p [emoji23][emoji23]

 

[Bald Rick]

Been puzzling all night. What does it stand for ?

Sorry - my spelling.
Nedap is should read.

Basically just another heat time/ruminant transponder (https://www.nedap-livestockmanagement.com/solution/heat-detection/) like SCR but I understand that Lely are in advanced negotiations to switch to Nedap from SCR.
I know we will be running Nedap shortly on the rotary as that is what GEA use

 

[No1 Yorkshire Farmer]

Sorry - my spelling.
Nedap is should read.

Basically just another heat time/ruminant transponder (https://www.nedap-livestockmanagement.com/solution/heat-detection/) like SCR but I understand that Lely are in advanced negotiations to switch to Nedap from SCR.
I know we will be running Nedap shortly on the rotary as that is what GEA use

Nedap and Lely been working together for years, its the reason the A2 and A3 cant be used "together" the A2 is all NEDAP - aka as "Cattlecode" its sold in the UK by Genisis mainly in the south. GEA also use Nedap.

you can have SCR or NEDAP on your robots now and could have done any time since the A3 was launched but in the UK Lely opted to only sell SCR due to the sucess of "Heatime" as same collars can then work the A3 or A4

one point I would make is the NEDAP collars on the A2s are all still working no problem to this day, some are over 20 year old....

 

[Bald Rick]

Nedap and Lely been working together for years, its the reason the A2 and A3 cant be used "together" the A2 is all NEDAP - aka as "Cattlecode" its sold in the UK by Genisis mainly in the south. GEA also use Nedap.

you can have SCR or NEDAP on your robots now and could have done any time since the A3 was launched but in the UK Lely opted to only sell SCR due to the sucess of "Heatime" as same collars can then work the A3 or A4

one point I would make is the NEDAP collars on the A2s are all still working no problem to this day, some are over 20 year old....

Thanks for the clarity but I understand that Lely are only intending to offer NEDAP going forward?

 

[No1 Yorkshire Farmer]

Thanks for the clarity but I understand that Lely are only intending to offer NEDAP going forward?

Sounds about right.. with all the SCR issues and the proven reliability of NEDAP they would be wise to switch back to something which causes less frustration and negative feedback from customers

 

[Seasider]

Anybody know what Delaval use. We used the same transponders from ‘96 installed “Alpro” parlour, most still going strong! 9 years on VMS

 

[Chips]

I've been having a chat with our centre about the ID going forward as they are going to stop backing up the old ones by Dec 19 , and they have given me the option of either new style SCR or Nedap, they claim scr to be better as they offer 4 yr warranty from start of use where as nedap it's 3 years from manufacture. Both they are offering for £60 including collars weights and numbers and they claim the scr to be as reliable as the scr . What ever it's going to be a huge bill just to be exactly in the same place .
Next they want to ramp up my master contract by an extra £3400 per year and not include the transponders in the cover which they have until now .
Alternatively for a small increase of £400 per year I can come off the master contract and go on one with no parts or consumables just labour .
Or finaly just for 3 services I can pay £3200 per year but with mileage and labour rates after two callouts I would be at select contract cost anyway . A £1000 per service is crazy money for what they actually do , one man in a van for about 3 hrs and a handful of parts but unfortunately unlike with cars/tractors where there is an an army of independants keeping dealers honest Lely have a monopoly and thus leaving me with little option other than to fire up the old milking bail !

 

[No1 Yorkshire Farmer]

I've been having a chat with our centre about the ID going forward as they are going to stop backing up the old ones by Dec 19 , and they have given me the option of either new style SCR or Nedap, they claim scr to be better as they offer 4 yr warranty from start of use where as nedap it's 3 years from manufacture. Both they are offering for £60 including collars weights and numbers and they claim the scr to be as reliable as the scr . What ever it's going to be a huge bill just to be exactly in the same place .
Next they want to ramp up my master contract by an extra £3400 per year and not include the transponders in the cover which they have until now .
Alternatively for a small increase of £400 per year I can come off the master contract and go on one with no parts or consumables just labour .
Or finaly just for 3 services I can pay £3200 per year but with mileage and labour rates after two callouts I would be at select contract cost anyway . A £1000 per service is crazy money for what they actually do , one man in a van for about 3 hrs and a handful of parts but unfortunately unlike with cars/tractors where there is an an army of independants keeping dealers honest Lely have a monopoly and thus leaving me with little option other than to fire up the old milking bail !

Seems like a big hike. Does your old contract not quote the amount it can be increased by ? Used to be the official UK rate of inflation it was linked to and went up by each year.

 

[Chips]

Seems like a big hike. Does your old contract not quote the amount it can be increased by ? Used to be the official UK rate of inflation it was linked to and went up by each year.

You're right , but they have served 3 months notice on the contract and thus I will be out of contract and forced to sign a new one otherwise their labour rate will double and add in £155 quid call out on top of mileage! Even in contract they want £15 admin per event and £1 per minute phone charge . All good money for running man's in vans , no massive workshop and equipment tools like a machinery dealer and far less parts inventory.

 

[Spear]

As charges keep rising I’m sure it will soon be worthwhile taking the engineers training course and doing work ourselves. Farms with 5 or more robots must already be at that point.

 

[mawleymoos]

Seems like a big hike. Does your old contract not quote the amount it can be increased by ? Used to be the official UK rate of inflation it was linked to and went up by each year.

Get and buy those Fullwood 225’s for sale on sat! Reliable,Simple to maintain, and no contract!! Our older mark 2’s are not costing or breaking down any more than when they were new! (Actually loads less!!) that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t like the new ones, but difficult to justify, as not having any issues with ours!

 

[wasted years]

You're right , but they have served 3 months notice on the contract and thus I will be out of contract and forced to sign a new one otherwise their labour rate will double and add in £155 quid call out on top of mileage! Even in contract they want £15 admin per event and £1 per minute phone charge . All good money for running man's in vans , no massive workshop and equipment tools like a machinery dealer and far less parts inventory.

Go through the pain barrier, buy some spares and look after them yourself.
As long as there is phone back up there isn't any reason why you can't do it.
At some point a good lely guy will realise that they could go private , charge by the minute for phone advice and do some install / repairs and do very well.

 

[No1 Yorkshire Farmer]

"A good lely guy"

Sounds a good idea, why's it not already happened?

 

[Chips]

Go through the pain barrier, buy some spares and look after them yourself.
As long as there is phone back up there isn't any reason why you can't do it.
At some point a good lely guy will realise that they could go private , charge by the minute for phone advice and do some install / repairs and do very well.

Tempting but then as a one man band sometimes not so easy especially with our daughters medical condition meaning we have to rush to hospital at a moments notice quite often , also they start charging through the nose for software updates ect , and you have to have your parlour serviced for farm assurance so they have a monopoly backed up by farm assurance thus they know they can get away with it .
On top of this they produced an invoice 18mth late at the end of last year , which after having checked our records we paid , then 3 mths later they issued it again which my wife ignored as she was sure she had paid it which of course she had , not long after she got a shirty phone call demanding the money , so my wife checked through the records for when the invoice should have been issued and of course there was no sign of it being paid because we had paid 18mths later when they got around to issuing the invoice , and what with a very hectic life with our daughter I think my wife could be forgiven for paying it again given the pressure Lely had wrongly placed on her . Once we discovered this from our accountant we phoned them and after them investigating they admitted their mistake and promised to pay us back , but never once apologised for 1. billing us twice 18mths late, 2 the shirty phone call when we had already paid and the 3 the fact we are still waiting for our money in fact they did not apologise at all. Now this week they have sent us an invoice for service which works out a 333 milkings per day and we only have one robot ! Another invoice for £1k for parts which are included in my contract and none the less will be defunct come December when they stop backing up the old scr system and thus need £5k to stick where we are .
After 10yrs of working hard to pay off the robot it would appear we should have put a parlour in ,financially we would be in the same position but given that the service cost for one robot is looking to be well in excess of 10k per year which would pay for a hell of a lot of relief milking in a parlour that costs hundreds to maintain . A shame because the robot and engineers have been excellent over the ten years and one manager turns the whole economics of it on it's head , I suspect along with their monopoly on service the grant system is also not helping and lely are having a grab on that 40% farmers are saving on buying new which doesn't help exisitng customers

 

[Bald Rick]

One thing in your favour @Chips .. at least you are comparatively close to engineers so your mileage call out will be a lot less than those who are some distance.
We were told that Lely are trying to get out of all Master contracts as they weren't "paying". However we (or rather my son) have got much better at maintenance/repair and carry more parts than ever

 

[Spear]

@Chips Naming and shaming and speaking to Lely themselves might be useful

 

[holstein654]

@Chips Naming and shaming and speaking to Lely themselves might be useful

What area are you in chips

 

[Chips]

One thing in your favour @Chips .. at least you are comparatively close to engineers so your mileage call out will be a lot less than those who are some distance.
We were told that Lely are trying to get out of all Master contracts as they weren't "paying". However we (or rather my son) have got much better at maintenance/repair and carry more parts than ever

That's the other annoying thing , I carried lots of parts over the years as it was a win win , they saved on call outs and I saved on down time waiting for engineer , my wife was always telling me why am I fixing this when they should be , but I didn't mind as it saved time and I knew I had the safety of back up if needed , as said their engineer said I was the lowest call out farm , if I stick on their contract I will be calling them out to change a light bulb in future !