Rise of the robots in the milking parlour

North Yorkshire dairy farmer and entrepreneur Tim Gibson started selling robotic milking systems to his colleagues in the industry ten years ago when he launched a business selling the Lely Astronaut model.

Neither the brand nor concept may yet have seen total lift-off amongst those who have remained in a sector that has been haemorrhaging farmers for the past decade, but robots could now be on a countdown to milking parlour domination in the coming years.

Next Wednesday, Tim will host an on-farm open day at the 350-acre Hunters Hill Farm, Crakehall, near Bedale where all dairy farmers are invited to take a look at how robots could help. But 
Tim’s concern for the dairy industry goes far beyond selling equipment and he is hoping the day will provide a platform for one of the sector’s most prominent speakers.

“David Handley, the 
leader of the militant pressure group Farmers For Action, 
will be here and this will give him the first public opportunity to announce what has happened to the voluntary code of practice that the major dairies were to have adopted by March 31 following on from the setting up of the Dairy Coalition last year.

“If they have all taken it up the government said they wouldn’t legislate or impose anything. I understand that a number of the major dairies who supply the bigger supermarkets have in the main adopted it but I’m not sure that all of them have. It could be interesting to find who hasn’t and whether 
they will be named and shamed.”

Tim’s milk goes to Payne’s Dairies based just south of Ripon and he’s presently receiving 30p per litre. The dairy industry is still in a distressed state and he believes that the collapse of the co-operative Dairy Farmers of Britain, of which he was once a district chairman, will linger long in the memory.

“We’ve just gone up to 30ppl, but we’ve needed that for the past year and with increased costs it needs to be higher. We lost all of our capital that was invested in Dairy Farmers of Britain as well as our monthly milk cheque. Co-operatives 
and farmers’ co-operation were dealt a massive blow through what happened. My own feeling is that it will be hard to get farmers to stand together ever again, even though it could be argued that they didn’t stand together very well. I wouldn’t say that all co-ops in this country are failures but very often 
farmers here fail to co-operate. In mainland Europe they appear far more organised.”

Tim has also looked to mainland Europe for his herd and no longer operates his farm in the traditional dairy farming manner such as breeding his own replacements.

“We have 200 cows and they are a mixture of mainly black and white, but also red and white Holsteins. They are all mainly from Holland now, from Friesland. We stopped breeding our own replacements after we had an outbreak of Neospora, which causes abortion.

“To make sure we had a clean sheet we decided to pull out of breeding our own replacements. All of our calves now go for beef to a neighbouring farmer 
who buys at an agreed 
price regardless of size or weight. The calves usually leave here at around a 
week old.

“Without the young stock I have expanded the herd from 130 to 200 and put in a third robot. I now buy two batches of 18 Dutch in-calf heifers in March/April and August. They calve in June/July 
and September/October. We now have a better 
health status and the heifers all arrive around the same 
size and same age, having been served by the same 
bull.

“I couldn’t find a supply like that in the UK and it’s no good buying a couple here and there each week at livestock markets because it is too time consuming.”

Tim continued: “We have recently set up a fully automated feeding system for the cows that I have developed in conjunction with other suppliers 
and I’m looking forward to showing those who come 
next week. The large mixer wagon is powered by electric and the straights and silage are all put in for the day. It then blends together and when the automated time to feed is reached it sends the feed on a conveyor to the troughs. It’s like a sushi bar for cows.

“The principle is that fresh feed is presented to them every two hours as opposed to once a day.

“The cows provide milk as and when they want to rather than just twice a day and that means they don’t get distended udders.”

When Tim first started selling the Lely Astronaut he faced up to the usual challenge when something untried is on the market. Ten years on he tells how that has changed.

“We’re now getting a 
bigger influx of dairy farmers who are not doubting the equipment they are just doubting their own ability to manage it and justify the expense. But there’s not 
much of a difference in cost between putting in a traditional herringbone 
16/16 milking parlour incorporating today’s technology and utilising 
two robots.”

Last year Lely Astronauts took a 33 per cent market share in new dairy 
equipment sales in the UK, and there are other brands too. When others are 
included it means that over 
50 per cent of last year’s 
spend on new milking equipment in the UK was 
on robots.

“We are now finding 
that we are on average 
selling two robots to most farms.”

Since a farmer normally changes or updates his milking parlour once in 25 years on average there are likely to be many more years before robots are likely to 
rule the milking world, but they are starting to take control.

Guide to how machines work

Robotic milking parlours are voluntary milking systems for cows.

The milking machines connect automatically to the cow’s teats and turn off when the milking is complete.

A safety mechanism ensures that cows can only be milked for a certain number of times per day, with some cows choosing to be milked four or five times a day.

Check out the latest in robotic milking at Hunters Hill Farm, Crakehall, Bedale DL8 1LA on Wednesday, April 10 from 10am.