Which robot is best?
- Thread starter puffy
- Start date
- Location
- South Molton
Yes they have now recently.
- Location
- Buxton, Derbyshire
When my uncle was looking at robots a few yrs ago, he said he would make the decision like he was choosing a tractor. First look at which ones have good local servicing and back up, and then pick which is your favourite colour.
Being a John Deere, man adopting that philosophy would have us ending up the same machine. We had a Westfalia parlour with excellent backup having a handful of engineers living within a 5-10 mile radius so we were confident on backup which was one of the main reasons for going for GEA robots. We looked towards having a routed system over free access, that narrowed it down. The other manual attachment which my own experience ties you down to a parlour routine where the length of time involved manually attaching a group wouldn't be any different from having a decent sized parlour though it is handy for breaking in heifers. We have great back up in terms of having somebody on site relatively quickly they are all good men but the knowledge is limited which isn't a fault of the engineers. My advice on buying a robot is by going onto as many farms as possible, ignore the sales patter, i wish we had ours in writing! There was a website advertising miones along with pictures of farms/farmers endorsing them some of which are or had taken legal action against them, the website has been taken down in the last month.
- Location
- Eastern Ontario Canada
Beware of false economy on purchase price. Find out true installation costs. Talk to an electrician (actual contractor not salesman) who has actually installed them. You may find out why the prices are so varied. Helped remove one (not a red one) last summer. Took two electricians two days to disconnect and remove all the electrical.
True that. Lely generally quote including installation ...... but that sum alone can be eye watering. However we have had no problems at all with installs (& out stalls as we moved a robot from one shed to another in a matter of hours)
As said, back up is critical for the first 18 months although it should be noted that more & more you are being left to get on with it and learn "on the job" so to speak
Local lely users tend to spend an awful lot of time fetching cows to the robot on a free access system, almost as long as milking in the old parlour some have commented. The delaval ones with guided cow traffic tend to send less texts to the herdsmen, as the cow has to go through the selection gates.
Lely while maybe not a bad machine is a robot constructed from a lot of parts that are out sourced , this is starting to cause problems because the heattime collars that lely use are made by SCR, and SCR have decided to stop manufacturing the old type collars, which has been disappointing and quite costly for Lely users and Lelys hands are tied when this happens because they dont make them in house.
Delaval on the other hand are a much larger company that do more manufacturing in house ( but not everything) so they do have more control over their products. They also tend to make new components/software etc compatible with older machines so you can keep them going for longer. Lely no longer stock parts for the older robots which is a smack in the face for the owners, who are basically forced into trading in the old for new machines, (great sales technique from Lely)
Gea not that popular in this area but the new monobox does look good, Fullwood and SAC I dont know that much about.
Lely while maybe not a bad machine is a robot constructed from a lot of parts that are out sourced , this is starting to cause problems because the heattime collars that lely use are made by SCR, and SCR have decided to stop manufacturing the old type collars, which has been disappointing and quite costly for Lely users and Lelys hands are tied when this happens because they dont make them in house.
Delaval on the other hand are a much larger company that do more manufacturing in house ( but not everything) so they do have more control over their products. They also tend to make new components/software etc compatible with older machines so you can keep them going for longer. Lely no longer stock parts for the older robots which is a smack in the face for the owners, who are basically forced into trading in the old for new machines, (great sales technique from Lely)
Gea not that popular in this area but the new monobox does look good, Fullwood and SAC I dont know that much about.
- Location
- Northern Ireland
If I were you I'd have a good look at Fullwood. And that's coming from a long-time Lely owner.
Scholsey
Member
- Location
- Herefordshire
Are GEA trying to help you or is it a you verses them situation? I found it odd how our local GEA dealer isn't allowed to sell robots despite looking after 1000's of cows worth of parlours.
- Location
- Northumberland
Not here, unless a big batch of new calved heifers.Often only 3 or 4 , usually stale cows.
Something wrong somewhere if a lot of cows to fectch
I think it comes down to feeding practices, from what the users tell me. If cows are well fed in the TMR then they will tend to lie in the cubicles for longer and milking frequency is reduced unless there is human intervention. If you cut back the concentrates in the TMR and feed more in the robot then this encourages cows to visit the robots more often. Only snag is you will probably pay more for the robot feed if it blown into a bin and possibly gettting it in a nut form.
- Location
- M6 Hard shoulder
Thats the key though not overdoing it at the trough, try and keep a slight edge on them and they'll be keen to come, we feed for 24/25 litres at the trough and as a rule work on 8/10 litres in the robot, we have learnt this the hard way when feeding too much and having too many collect cows, I work on 5% of cows to collect so we are running 155 through the robots and collect around 5 or 6 twice a day, which takes 5 mins
- Location
- Northumberland
Invariably when robots "don`t work" the problem is the mindset of the operator
At the start, there was a lot of support as they were trying to push them though problem's were slow to getting resolved, units coming off, race not working properly to name a few. There was the support from the dealership but we have felt from the start they have not had full support from GEA. We found problems got resolved by kicking shins, each time this was the case and in the end certain problems were very simple to resolve, speaking to the right person in the first place would have solved a lot of grief but i am unsure if the right person would be there. We had visits from GEA one being over two years ago now where the person had commented on a certain farmer having problems, he mentioned that we will work with him but if he goes against us we are bigger than him! That came from someone relatively high up within GEA, he was being serious. A year 18months ago i was contacted by another Mione farmer and that’s when we first found out of other people's problems. I feel there is a big push for the monobox. There are too many flaws with mione, and we continually have large invoices coming in each month with problems new and old. I feel GEA would be happy for us to go to the wall but if we do it quietly. We made an ill informed decision based on what we were told, investing a huge amount of money. It has caused a lot of stress for my family. We are in a similar position as many other Mione farmers at the minute in how we deal with it so i imagine GEA has a large sh*t list and we are well up it. I imagine until they are happy with the monobox and the dealer support they will limit where they are putting them, there will have been lessons learnt from it's predecessor and a steep learning curve having gone through, i fear we may be the casualties of that. There are monoboxes going out our neck of the woods i am hoping they have got it right this time.
be very careful with delaval, they undercut everyone on install price but more than make up the shortfall on aftersales work in the years following installation, as a dealer they have their own area and no one is allowed to compete or even get the parts required to be able to compete,
Scholsey
Member
- Location
- Herefordshire
I hope you manage to get things sorted and can move forwards, must be a difficult time for you all.
- Location
- M6 Hard shoulder
Have you had any contact with trading standards or can you gather a group of m1one users together to approach gea ? As a robot farmer I can appreciate your feelings when things constantly go wrong, its bad enough when it happens occasionally, hope things get sorted and gea do the right thing by you.
happycows
Member
- Location
- North Devon Cornwall border
I feel i know Flipper but unfortunately i don't think i do and he's not the only one in exactly the same position. i believe a group of farmers are working together on this subject so i'll leave it at that.....
There biggest downfall imo of the multi box was the wild claims that one arm could service several boxes with only a minimal fall in total output per box compared to one arm one box systems. This was never going to be the case but people did budgets and forecasts on those figures and in reality they were never going to be achieved.
I know of one who has been milking twice a day in his conventional parlour since the day they started with robots several years ago just to maintain the predicted yield.
Hanspree
Member
- Location
- Lancashire
How is the GEA robot rotary going at Glastonbury? The arm idea on that is the same as the monobox.
- Tags
- maize