Robotic milking

[The Agrarian]

What's everyone's freezing weather procedure with robots? Ours are quite open in the shed and bit concerned about -14 temps forecast for later, already -4.

Um, it's pretty much a nightmare in an airy shed. Few winter's back when we had prolonged cold weather down to -16 at night and up to -8 during the day for the worst week, it was a living nightmare. I once had a machine down for an hour due to a fault. Getting the damn thing going again was a struggle, and then I spent an extra hour up in the bucket of the handler trying to thaw out the water feed to it, which came across the roof. Space heaters are useful, but keeping the heat long enough in the robot room to do any good is very hard indeed. Our water supply rises up through the the floor into the dairy. As the tank only washes EOD, the line froze down into the ground, and stayed frozen for six days AFTER the thaw had started. Tank wasn't washed for about ten days. It's awful. But if it's only for a night or two, you'll get through it.

 

[pappuller]

make sure space heater is not pointing at the plastic, a robot went up due to that once and completely burnt out!

no just poking into the robot room through the door

 

[upnortheast]

Our robots seem Ok up to around -8 outside temp.
Have a couple of space heaters we bought about 7 years ago in a prolonged cold spell, Havn`t been out of the box since - until last night !
In the tank room where the water only moves alternate days we have found heated cable brilliant
Tape it on, including round the tank solenoid valves, cover with insulation & it looks after itself
This sort of thing
https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/BNPW21.html

 

[Scholsey]

Well robots battled on through the night unscathed, auto scraper winches are another matter......

 

[Scholsey]

Does everyone use the proper laser cleaner fluid to clean the robot lasers? I have finally used up the 2 bottles of lely lense cleaner I had when the robots were new, it looks and smells just like windowlene with red food colouring in it.......

 

[Chips]

Does everyone use the proper laser cleaner fluid to clean the robot lasers? I have finally used up the 2 bottles of lely lense cleaner I had when the robots were new, it looks and smells just like windowlene with red food colouring in it.......

Just clean it with the foamer to be honest

 

[Sid]

Water and sponge.
Tooth brush for the corners

 

[No1 Yorkshire Farmer]

Does everyone use the proper laser cleaner fluid to clean the robot lasers? I have finally used up the 2 bottles of lely lense cleaner I had when the robots were new, it looks and smells just like windowlene with red food colouring in it.......

Window cleaner wipes

 

[Chippy]

Anyone found any good plastic foot baths for the exit of a robot? Always used a standard 2 meter Paxton one but like look of these ones where muck falls down middle

 

[Chippy]

Like this one

 

[Chippy]

And this one

 

[No1 Yorkshire Farmer]

pet hate of robot exits with foot baths! lower throughput and put cows off using robot but its a job that needs to be done. better if it can be sited somewhere away from the robot

 

[upnortheast]

Havn`t noticed it affecting throughput here. They are inclinded to stand in it till they are ready to shite !!
Hence the need for something easily tipped

 

[Chippy]

Yeh Footbath doesn’t affect my cows but it’s only there for 12 hours then it’s full of sh!t and only goes in front of each robot once a week but wouldn’t mind something I can leave for 24 hours maybe to have more affect

 

[Sid]

Delaval do an automatic one that fills and empties itself i think?

 

[Chips]

I Use one of these , works very well . I leave it in place until I see the visits start to drop off which is usually after 2 to 3 days , by which time they have been through it up around 12-18 times and thus has time to break down the dried on muck and get at any bugs/infection lying beneath . Then leave it out for a couple of weeks . Got mine with a grant which makes it quite reasonable .

 

[Chippy]

Wasn’t going to go down the auto footbath route because I have 4 robots and don’t want to buy 4 foot baths so I just move plastic one round

 

[mawleymoos]

We got fed up hauling/emptying and herding cows through footbaths! When the weather took up ,it was put on the back burner! We got a grant for x4 Hoofcount’s ! which just about made it viable! The worst thing about robots is that they dung on the way out! But at least the auto footbaths refill every so many cows!

 

[Chippy]

We got fed up hauling/emptying and herding cows through footbaths! When the weather took up ,it was put on the back burner! We got a grant for x4 Hoofcount’s ! which just about made it viable! The worst thing about robots is that they dung on the way out! But at least the auto footbaths refill every so many cows!

You happy with the Hoofcount’s? They seem to be the best. I’m tempted to get 2 and hope most the cows go through them at least once a week? What chemical you putting through them mawleymoos? Your like me you have an AD plant now and I’m getting told I shouldnt be putting formalin in it but is 30 litre a week really that bad?

 

[mawleymoos]

We originally sampled our slurry! It was only about 6% dm, but had a good enough gas potential (even with the footbath water) so we diverted the remaining robot wash water and all the footbath water, and now got 10.5%dm!!! Now we have been advised to try and get it below 10%dm, so added one footbath back in! They don’t seem too worried about formalin!
Yes I think the Hoofcount is one of the better ones, we use mainly formalin and every couple of weeks use their own blend of formalin, copper sulphate and a third ingredient! Which I can’t remember! We havnt used and antibiotics for over a year now!!