To robot or not to robot in Laois

The Cobbe family from Portarlington in Co Laois hosted the Irish Grassland Association summer dairy tour last month.

The father and son team of Roy and Trevor Cobbe are milking 128 cows on the 42ha milking platform through a six unit double-up milking parlour.

The parlour started life as a four unit swing-over parlour which was then increased to a six-unit and then doubled-up as the herd got bigger.

Milking the higher yielding cows is currently taking 2.5 hours each morning and evening and both men agree that a new facility is required to reduce the milking times.

Expanding the existing milking parlour isn’t really an option, due to its location within the farmyard.

Collecting yard

As things stand, the collecting yard is located at right angles to the milking parlour so when cows enter the parlour they turn right into the cow stands. There is a dwelling house located directly behind the parlour so that’s limiting the options available to expand it. So a new facility is planned.

Teagasc’s Patrick Gowing was speaking at the farm walk and he presented figures on the costs of a new 20 unit milking parlour versus installing two robots on the farm.

In terms of capital outlay excluding VAT and any grant aid, the double robots came to €265,000.

In the plan, the units were being installed in an existing calf shed near the dairy, so the total build costs associated with the robots was €40,000 excluding VAT.

A new soiled water tank is required in both situations and this has been budgeted at €45,000 excluding VAT.

Additional roadways will be required in the robot system and these have been budgeted at €5,000 excluding VAT. This brings the total cost of switching over to the robot system to €360,000 excluding VAT.

The other option explored on the day was the construction of a new 20-unit milking parlour on a greenfield site adjacent to the farmyard.

Drafting gates

Patrick outlined how a medium specification milking parlour would cost €8,000 per milking unit bringing the total cost of the plant to €160,000 excluding VAT. Drafting gates or cow collars are not included in these costings.

On top of that, a new building will be required and the cost of this has been estimated at €115,000 excluding VAT for parlour, collecting yard and dairy/plant room.

Like with the robots, a new soiled water tank is required and this is estimated to cost €45,000 excluding VAT. Patrick also included a cost of €7,000 to supply electricity to the new location of the milking parlour. The total cost of the parlour option came to €327,000 excluding VAT.

Merits

There was a good discussion on the merits of both systems and many of the costings were challenged by the farmers in the audience.

Trevor said that milking 130 to 140 cows was more or less as many cows as they intend to milk and Roy said that they would only be milking more cows in the unlikely event that extra land became available.

Some said that a smaller parlour could be constructed at lower cost which would make that system more financially attractive.

Some farmers in the audience who have robots themselves said that the improved work/life balance afforded by the robots is hard to quantify but worth the extra investment.

Work/life balance

Roy made the point that their work/life balance is currently good and that they aim to leave the yard at 6pm every evening and that both he and Trevor are very active outside of the farm in sport and other interests;

“We value that and think it’s important. The question I have is if the two of us are gone away and we have robots installed, is the system going to be ringing us telling us that cow number 47 is still out the field somewhere?” he asked.

Others said that if the robots are going to be installed in the calf shed, then that calf shed needs to be replaced and the cost of that needs to be factored in. It was also highlighted that the Cobbes have 14 acres located across the road and that land would no longer be able to be grazed by the milking cows if robots were installed.

Poll

An online poll was conducted by the Irish Grassland Association among the attendees at the farm walk. One of the questions asked what they thought are the biggest constraints with robots. Over 54% of participants felt that ability to scale up was the biggest constraint, followed by 26% citing grassland management as the biggest constraint.

Just over 12% said that service costs are the biggest constraints followed by investment cost and life span. On service costs, Patrick Gowing said that service costs are typically €3,000 per robot. On milk yield, he said that there should be no additional milk yield per cow budgeted.

“If you milk the cows more often, which the robot can do, the cows will give more milk. But you can do that on a parlour as well. But if your cows are giving more milk, they have to be getting more feed. There is no free energy and it takes energy to produce milk,” Patrick said.

Herringbone

On the subject of system drift, Patrick said that how you make money from dairy farming doesn’t change just because the cows are milked in a robot and the farm should remain as a spring calving, grass- based system. At the end of the discussion, the attendees were asked again what type of a milking system they would recommend the Cobbes to install and the overwhelming majority, 72% went for a herringbone. When asked for their own thoughts, Trevor had this to say: “I would definitely be leaning more towards a conventional parlour. I think the system here works well for us and that allows for expansion if that were to ever come about, whereas with the robots that would be a bit trickier.

“I suppose at the end of it I quite like milking cows but it’s just taking too long at the moment. I think if we had the right size parlour and we were able to get through them in a decent time it would be fine,” he said.

In short