Robotic milking is now common practice in Northern Ireland and last week, John Killen hosted a farm walk on his mixed dairy and arable unit to outline his journey away from a traditional parlour to robots.
John farms around 500ac of grass and tillage crops halfway between the village of Eglinton and Derry City.
The farm carries a dairy herd of 150 crossbred cows which combine Holstein, Fleckvieh and Norwegian Red genetics.
Calving commences in mid-September and runs to early April, although 50% of cows will be calved in the first two months of the autumn.
Cows are then bred to a mix of sexed semen and swept up with an Angus stock bull. Heifers are generally retained for herd replacements, with Angus cattle taken through to slaughter.
Switching system
Prior to the robots, the herd consisted of 200 cows being milked through a parlour with a 20-point unit that is still on-farm. While initially a sceptic about using robots to milk cows, the demand on labour was getting too much to manage.
From late spring to late autumn, John is busy with planting, growing and harvesting crops on the arable unit, as well as operating a four-cut silage system and the general day-to-day management of cows.
In November 2018, he made the decision to install the first robot, opting for the Lely A5 which was new to market at the time. The robot fitted in well with herd management over the winter, milking a rolling group of 55 high-yielding cows.
The cows on the robot remained housed over the summer of 2019, while the remainder of the herd continued to be grazed and milked twice daily through the parlour.
Scaling up
One of the big benefits John saw with the robot was a major lift in milk yields. Cows had been yielding in the region of 8,300l annually through the parlour.
However, the group on the robot saw yields lift to 10,500l in their first year. As well as the other practicalities of feed to yield, monitoring cell counts and a reduced workload, John was suitably impressed and installed his second robot in the autumn of 2019.
He continued to run the parlour to milk the surplus cows. But with smaller numbers going through the parlour, he installed his third robot in February 2022 and switched the parlour off permanently, scaling back to the 150 cows.
“There is a big cost to installing a robot, but plenty of farmers think nothing of buying new machinery that only works for five or six months of the year.
“The robots are working 24/7 all year round and I am getting more milk out of my cows as a result,” said John.
Grazing
John is a dairy farmer that has always liked his cows to utilise grazed grass. When the first robot was installed, he kept the 55 cows on the unit housed over the summer.
But he was keen to get all cows back to grass at some point during the grazing season, so in his second year, he installed a grazing gate, which he manually controlled.
“I started off by keeping high-yielders inside for the robot and just letting low-yielding cows graze for 12 hours, then back inside for 12 hours.
“It worked ok, but there wasn’t the same grazing pressure on paddocks, so grass was harder to manage. It was getting too strong for grazing a lot of the time and utilisation was not as good.
“I was keen to get high-yielders out to grass as well. So last year, I went for an automated grazing gate and set up an ABC paddock system and it has worked well.
“Cows move in and out to grass on their own. I initially thought the number of times cows visit the robot would fall, but so far, they have stayed the same at 3.4 visits per day.
“This has kept milk yields the same, so I am very happy with it. I never have to sweep paddocks to bring cows in to the robots. They want to come in, get milked and go out to fresh grass again.”
Paddock system
The herd is grazed on a 30ac platform around the yard. Currently, there are 114 cows in milk, as the September calving animals have been dried off.
The ABC grazing system works on the principle of offering cows three fresh eight-hour grazing or feed allocations every day.
An automated grazing gate is installed on the side of the main cow shed and diverts cows to specific grazing blocks depending on the time of day. The cows go out to the A paddocks at 3am. At 11am, the grazing gate changes and directs cows to the B paddocks.
Finally, the cows are given the C allocation in the evening. However, as there is limited land around the yard, the C paddock is a diet of whole crop wheat, grass silage and crimped grain fed in the shed.
“The shed forage is fed every evening at 5:30pm. Cows will have grazed the B paddock out by this time of day and will come in for the mix on their own. I never have to fetch them.”
Diets
Cows are fed to yield through the robot and diets are formulated to balance forage and home-grown grains with a protein blend purchased. Feed rates are set at 0.3kg of concentrate per litre of milk produced.
Three total mixed rations (TMR) have been formulated for the herd and are pre-programmed into the diet feeder.
“To hold milk yields at 10,500l/cow with the grazing system, you have to encourage cows to visit the robot.This means getting the feed balance right. Give too much fresh grass and they won’t come in to the shed to get milked,” outlined the herd’s nutritionist, David Mawhinney.
“The three rations are all set to stage of lactation. Whole crop wheat and crimped grain content stays constant. The grass silage allocation changes between the three TMR mixes.
“As cows graze, the level of grass silage is reduced. The first mix is a transition feed for freshly-calved cows and consists of 10kg of whole crop wheat, 2.5kg of crimped grain and 3kg of a 16% protein blend plus silage.
“Mix two sees the blend changing to a 20% protein ration around 22 days in milk. Silage is adjusted depending on whether cows are grazing or not. The third mix is more suited to grazing with a low silage inclusion,” Mawhinney added.
Cows are dried off 60 days before the predicted calving date and grazed for the first 30 days. They are then housed for the next 30 days and offered whole crop silage, crimped wheat and 5kg of chopped straw, along with 2kg/day of a pre-calving blend, silage and balanced with minerals.
“The system is working better than I could have hoped for. I wouldn’t change back to the parlour,” concluded John.
150 dairy cows.
Average yield 10,500l on 3.1t/cow concentrate.
Switched from 20-point parlour to three robots.
Using A,B,C grazing system.