NOTES FROM A ROBOTIC MILKING PEER GROUP

Have you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall? It’s a common expression to describe a situation where you would like to be an unobserved observer. You might want to observe a political event, or a celebrity, or even a controversial conversation or confrontation. How about being a fly on the wall at a robotic milking peer group. Actually, I did not have to be a fly. Last month I was invited to gather data, and participate in a meeting of several farms. The group included a cross section of brands, traffic types, herd sizes, and management styles. Both the data and the discussion were thought provoking. Here are some of the take-away points.

Importance of the First Lactation

It shouldn’t be a surprise, but it catches my attention every time I benchmark a group of

farms, and it’s worth mentioning. You can’t have a top-producing herd without top-producing heifers. If your herd is 35% first lactation, and heifers average 86 pounds, your mature cows will have to average 107 pounds for the herd to average 100 pounds. If your heifers average 78 pounds, cows will have to average 112 pounds for a 100-pound herd average. Milking frequency in the first 21 days is the key to high production from heifers. 3 to 4 milkings is ideal. Most importantly, heifers cannot have days with only 1 milking. This might seem obvious, but it happens, and it consistently limits production. As one of the participants said, “When you impact early lactation cows you are stuck with them for a year.”

Robot Capacity

Robot stocking rates and barn stocking rates varied among the group. The top herds for production per robot were not the same as the top herds for production per cow. A few of the herds had overstocked stalls and bunks with 50 cows per robot. They averaged about 150 milkings and 5,000 pounds per robot per day. Barns with over 60 cows per robot were closer to 170 milkings and over 6,000 pounds per day. Barns with more cows per robot had to restrict milking permission in late lactation in order to make time for fresh cows to milk 3X. Barns with fewer cows per robot did not have to restrict late lactation milking permission as much. Anecdotally, production per robot was higher in the barns with more cows per robot, but late lactation cows were more persistent, and production per cow was higher in barns with fewer cows per robot.

Adding More Automation

Once the robots were in place, farms were more likely to look for other automation. Alley scrapers are a given, and most farms had feed pushers too. Next steps included calf feeders, sort gates, and activity or progesterone monitoring. More automation usually means fewer cow touches. Somebody said they preferred to, “Get things out of people’s hands and let cows do their own thing.”

This group clearly demonstrated that there is more than one way to manage a successful robot barn – different brands, stocking densities, and traffic patterns. At the same time, there are some rules that always have to be followed – like maximizing milkings in the first 21 days in milk, especially for heifers.