A Modern Milker
Court Farm in Gloucester is part of a growing trend towards robotic milking, with the EU estimating that by 2025, 50% of dairy herds in Europe will be milked robotically.
Productivity has improved “immensely” since Court Farm made the switch to robots nearly a year ago, according to owner Calvin Pugh. “My wife and I were spending five-and-a-half hours a day milking cows. They needed milking more than twice a day and were having health issues because of this. Now, we still spend quite a bit of time with the cows, but it’s more flexible. And the cows have increased their yield by around 20%. A lot of the health issues went away when we switched to robotic milking too.”
And this is usually the case, according to Lely, the company developing the milking machines. The company says that when left to their own discretion the cows will take themselves to the robot for milking more frequently than a farmer would be able to milk them due to time constraints. The robot will also take a large amount of data from the cow during the milking process, allowing symptoms of diseases such as mastitis to be flagged early on.
With demand for these robot solutions increasing – which Lely puts down to awareness of pending labour shortages and the inclusion of robotic milking systems in the current round of grants – this modern milking method could soon become the norm.
Source: https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/stores/supply-chain/10-robotic-farmers-working-around-the-globe/571324.article


