SOME 16 years ago Wisconsin dairy farmer Peter Knigge was faced with a tough decision. He could either employ labour on his 240 hectare farm, or he could help pioneer the use of robotics in the US dairy industry.
Despite being in the infancy of its development, Mr Knigge chose to make a million dollar investment in robotics and associated infrastructure.
“The challenge was we had had no experience with hired labour and at that time labour for dairy farms was very scarce,” Mr Knigge said.
Mr Knigge, his wife Theo and their son Charlie milk 110 Holstein cows at Omro, about 300km north of Chicago.
He said what really crystalised his decision to make the leap to the new technology being developed by the Dutch company Lely was the economic reality of robots.
"You eventually pay off a robot," Mr Knigge said. "You never stop paying off labour.
“We could also see there was a lot less stress on the cows. The cows are milked when they want to be milked, as often as they want to be milked.
“Equally importantly the robots freed us up from the dairy. Now there is time not just to better manage the farm but enjoy a much better lifestyle.”
Knigge Farms was one of a number of farms visited by a group of Australian and New Zealand farmers
The Knigge’s have two second generation Lely Astronaut robotic milking machines in their purpose built sand-stall barn.
The milking herd is split into two groups of 55 cows which are fitted with electronic ID tags which communicates with the robot. The cows literally milk themselves by entering the robotic milking machine, attracted by the high energy pellets dispensed by the feeder at the front of the milking unit.
“The purpose formulated high energy pellets are what attract each cow into the robot. Cows in milk crave energy.”
The amount of pellets each cow received is determined by its level of milk production.
Cows which have already received their allocated ration are immediately presented with an open exit gate, allowing the next cow to enter the unit. Likewise, an alert is triggered if a young cow has not been milked within a set number of hours.
Charlie Knigge said educating the cows to the robotic system was an important task.
“Educating young cows to the robot can be a challenge but as soon as they realise the high energy pellets are in front of them, they generally settle in very quickly,” he said.
The calves are also fed in a separate barn using another Lely robot system. A sensor reads the ID tag of the hungry calf when it seeks to drink from the artificial teat in the pen. If the calf is scheduled to be fed the robot delivers in controlled amounts of instantly mixed milk.
Alltech dairy consultant Tom Lorenzen said there had been significant growth in robotic dairy technology, particularly in smaller, family operations.
“Farmers are increasingly seeing that milking robots are a way of freeing up time and overcoming labour issues,” Mr Lorenzen said.
“There are also plenty of advantages in managing the performance and health of the herd.”
- Mark Phelps traveled to Wisconsin as a guest of Alltech.