Robotic milking

upnortheast

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Northumberland
After 9 years one of the xlink screens died.
A3 ones no longer available , they say
We will put one of the new ones on says the LC man , (initially held with tape due to lack of proper brackets.
After 4 months new one stops working.
Lely centre say ,That`s normal, have you a hair dryer to warm it up. Well it did work.
But the temp at the time was +4 degrees C :scratchhead:
Anyone else had the benefit of this bit of engineering genius ?
 
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Col555

Member
Location
Cumbria
Yes, going back to kenopure brush cleaner that comes as a concentrate, need to fill them up with 150litres of water before adding 50 litres of chemical. If you add chemical first then water all you get is a lot of froth!

Going back to kenopure from what....and why?

Anyone ever made up their own brush wash? I’m thinking of trailing a home brew. For 40 odd years dad always used a single cloth in a bucket of water with a couple spash of dairy hypo and fairy washing up liquid as a pre wash before putting the cluster on.. we never had any cell count issues or anything through the parlour. Is there any reason why it wouldn’t work as a brush wash?? Would be pushing towards £1500 saving a year
 

Scholsey

Member
Location
Herefordshire
Going back to kenopure from what....and why?

Anyone ever made up their own brush wash? I’m thinking of trailing a home brew. For 40 odd years dad always used a single cloth in a bucket of water with a couple spash of dairy hypo and fairy washing up liquid as a pre wash before putting the cluster on.. we never had any cell count issues or anything through the parlour. Is there any reason why it wouldn’t work as a brush wash?? Would be pushing towards £1500 saving a year

Were using dual care RTU which is a Progiene product but delivery issues and doesn’t froth enough for my liking. The brushes were instantly cleaner in appearance as soon as we switched back to kenopure.

No reason why a home brew wouldn’t work, could just be extremely expensive if it ever doesn’t.
 

clem dog

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Co Antrim
Going back to kenopure from what....and why?

Anyone ever made up their own brush wash? I’m thinking of trailing a home brew. For 40 odd years dad always used a single cloth in a bucket of water with a couple spash of dairy hypo and fairy washing up liquid as a pre wash before putting the cluster on.. we never had any cell count issues or anything through the parlour. Is there any reason why it wouldn’t work as a brush wash?? Would be pushing towards £1500 saving a year
How would you work out the dilution rate for the pump?
What are you using currently?
 

Col555

Member
Location
Cumbria
How would you work out the dilution rate for the pump?
What are you using currently?

I caught a spray cycle in an jug the other day, so know the total is 500ml. I haven’t yet measured how much pre mixed solution is taken, so will need the pump pipe into a litre jug instead of a barrel to get that figure. which I’m sure could be altered because I think it’s based on x seconds run time in the system configurator.

Been on kenopure, but currently on kilco lactocleanse more so because my supplier recommended the switch based on cost, but there isn’t much in it be tbh. I haven’t noticed any detrimental effects from the switch after a month or so. He also recommended adding 600ml of fairy liquid to a 200l drum to help the foaming, which sowed the seed about making a home brew.
 

s line

Member
We have got a lely classic A3 for sale. It's a 2009 model. It's been serviced by Lely center Midlands. It's done around 630,000 milkings. Please contact me for further information.
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thesilentone

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Cumbria
It would be interesting to hear from the experienced users (over 5 years) who are now well placed to give an accurate summary on there decision to go Robotic.

Suggested headings.

1) Daily work schedule
2) Operation/user friendly
3) Reliability and service support.
4) Energy consumption
5) Performance/ milk yield/ quality
6) Animal health and management
7) Profitability
8) Other issues /lifestyle/management support/updates etc
9) ONE key item you would change
10) General summary

It's up to you if you want to add make of robot, number of robots/cows, age of robots etc. Out of interest, it would be beneficial if you could also mark the the above heading out of 10, 10 being extremely happy.

A few words for each heading would also be interesting.
 

Sid

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
South Molton
NFU SW Dairy board have a visit there .....i may go for a peek and see how their grazing on bots is going :unsure:
Grazing has been a huge challenge for them this year, loads of tweaks needs and a few structural issue from what we could see.

Rest of system seems to work reasonably well , but a lot of technical kit that cant be fixed with a hammer!
 

yin ewe

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Co Antrim
1) 7am start, late cows fresh heifers, feed, bed cubicles, other work (off farm some days) evening 5pm repeat (silage to graip in) in house for 6. 10pm graip silage, fresh heifers, half hour max.

2) Very user friendly

3) Good reliability and excellent service/breakdown cover

4) Approximately £80 a week

5) Milk yield up 20% no difference in quality.

6) No difference in health but cows quieter to handle

7) Still making no money

8) Big lifestyle change, no longer tied to milking times etc

9) Ability to manually attach cows(Lely) especially useful for fidgety heifer for the first few milkings

10) Couldn't see myself going back to a Parlour but never is a long time.
 

Scholsey

Member
Location
Herefordshire
1) Daily work schedule

Varies, 7am start, late/fresh cows, feed calves, feed cows, bed cubicles.

4pm late/fresh cows, feed calfs, push silage up.

2) Operation/user friendly

Good, but Crystal/uniform not foolproof


3) Reliability and service support.

Good but could be better

4) Energy consumption

Around 15k a year from grid plus 80kw solar for 1,500,000 litres

5) Performance/ milk yield/ quality

Good think it gets the best out of a cow within reason

6) Animal health and management

Spend more time with the right cows, forget some easy to get in calf exist until I have to dry them off


7) Profitability

pardon?

8) Other issues /lifestyle/management

spend far more time with my kids than my father did with me even if someone that is whilst I am fixing a robot and they are passing me tools! Easier to get staff


9) ONE key item you would change

fullwood having a bit more drive


10) General summary

Happy, had them 4 years so might not be allowed to participate, think they are the most farmer friendly way of milking cows possibly not the most bank friendly.
 

kill

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
South West
Haven't been using robots here but just over 8 months but the one big regret is letting my builders steer me away from installing grids around the robots as don't underestimate how much WATER they will produce and once mixed with slurry it adds massively to volume of slurry and ease of scraping as water is a bugger to move with any scraper.

Will retrofit grids at some point as I guess water adds an extra hour+ to my day and will also add grids at end of cubicles so then only straight line scraping ?
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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    Votes: 6 3.3%

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

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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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