It’s an honour to be asked and a privilege to prepare and present this paper on the subject of automation in dairy farming.

I’m the elder of two sons both brought up on the family dairy farm in East Ayrshire, we’d be third generation dairy farmers and from a very early age helped with every aspect of running a dairy farm. There wasn’t much we hadn’t done by the time we started secondary school aged 12. The 4 years at secondary seemed a waste of time as there were better things to be done at home. I left as soon as possible.

We milked the cows in a Byre up until 1988, our first milking parlour was a Surge auto tandem with auto sequencing and milk meters. Up until then I really wasn’t that interested in cows, it was only when we now could see how much milk each cow produced that the penny dropped i.e. the better the cow the better the yield and the more money we’d make. It’s worth mentioning that in 1985 during a bad winter, we and our neighbours had to take the milk down to a tanker for collection. I noticed we’d more milk than even some of the bigger farms. I remember we were milking 105 Friesians producing 20 litres, now we’re milking 220 Holsteins yielding 40 Litres. The other difference is we were making decent money then unlike today.

I worked for my uncle in the summer months who is an agricultural contractor and did so till I got married to wife Lindsay in 1996. In the same year the family, now run as a partnership, purchased Strandhead Farm 13 miles nearer the coast. This farm is 200 acres and is on some of the better land in Ayrshire. The farm steading was old fashioned with cubicle housing for seventy cows and a small slatted shed for youngstock. Over the next few years we spent time improving and adding buildings capable of housing youngstock for a herd of 200. In doing so I gathered enough know how and experience to start generating an extra income by diversifying into construction and supplying concrete.

The company Ve-Tech Concrete was formed in 2007 and now employs 35 people carrying out every aspect from planning through to completion.

At this point we were still milking a portion of the original herd which I had graded up in the late eighties and with future development in mind I went with some friends to World Dairy Expo in America looking in particular at building designs and all aspects of cow management and welfare. I was surprised by the variation in farm size and impressed with the high standard of animal welfare throughout. I was actually disappointed when I realised deep bedded stalls were providing a higher level of comfort than the mattress type systems I’d been used to. There was the first time I’d seen a cross ventilated building which allowed buildings to be low and wide and house large numbers of cows because one side of the building had huge fans blowing fresh air over the cows eliminating problems with heat stress.

When we moved to Strandhead in 1996 believe it or not my intention was to milk with robots, I had always been impressed by the way these machines worked. At that time there was one farm nearby who basically replaced 4 cubicles with a robot and set up a routed system. Two farms purpose built two robot systems but due to the fact all the Lely engineers were based near Aberdeen these three farms replaced their robots with herringbone parlours, it seemed robots in Ayrshire had died a death. Then in 2011 a Lely centre opened near Kilmarnock (only eight miles away) who sold to a farmer who asked us to design and build a free access 3 robot unit on a green field site, which works very successfully.

I travelled to Holland to see what they were doing. On the first night we landed we visited a two robot farm with what I thought was a very clever but simple shed with feeding down both sides of two head to head cubicles over slatted floors with straw bedded separation behind. I knew then this type of system would suit the cows on our farm at home. I have been back to Holland and Denmark many times since looking at different types of buildings.

By 2013 both our parents had passed away and my brother David and I decided to split the partnership which would allow me to raise the funds and put plans in place for the construction of the new unit.

I decided on a clear span building, 20 degree roof, over 6 row cubicles with central feed passage. Two head to head Lely A4’s on either side which exit cows through automatic footbaths or segregate to either a treatment area or straw bedded area. Slurry is stored beneath a slatted floor and mixed with an aeration system. The building is also home for calves up to 10 weeks and all dry cows. Stalls are deep bedded with separated solids via a slurry separator. Three robotic scrapers keep the floor clean. We have invested in Lely’s automatic feeding system, which has had a profound effect on performance and is increasing production by 2.75 litres/cow/day. It is extremely accurate and I calculate the physical cost of feeding cows with this type of system to be under 1ppl with the whole system paid back over 10 years.

With this system if we input the cost of each ingredient in the diet it can therefore monitor feed costs and compare with value of milk sold and so produce constantly updating feed conversion efficiency and margin over feed.

The below details are based upon the average delivery by the Vector (Jan 2017):

• Purchased feedcost per litre 8.2p.
• Based upon 39 litres at 27p/litre gives us a milk income per cow of £10.53
• Feedcost of 8.2p/litre X 39 is a cost/cow £3.20.

This gives a margin after purchased feed cost of £7.33

FCE 1.55 (1.55kg of milk for every kg of feed eaten).

The diet based upon average delivery from the Vector (Jan 2017). With just about 70% forage in the diet for rumen health:

• 27.5kg of grass silages
• 12.5kg maize
• 1kg straw/hay
• 2.4kg protein blend
• 4.2kg energy blend
• Mineral fusion .3kg (mineral, yeast, buffer, additional limestone etc)

Cakes are formulated specifically for the farm. Averaging 7kg/cow/day, split depends on stage of lactation.

Cost per litre high but litres sold delivers milk income, so margin better than lower feed cost and lower litres. Long term is to drive forage up, now that more forage is available.

Cow comfort etc. all supports 12,000+ litre cows and there is no real reason why 13,000 litres can’t be achieved.

Dry cow period is 50 days, no anionic salts are used. The dry cow diet, is a single diet to all cows consisting of:

• 6kg straw
• 14kg silage
• 4kg maize
• 200g dry cow mineral
• 2kg cow protein blend
• Topped up for the last 2 weeks with Xzelit

We have a number of fertility protocols in place:

• PNC (post-natal check) at 30 days
• VWP (voluntary waiting period) 60 days
• Cows brought to Vet if not served by 70 days
• Historically average days to 1st service 85 days (by choice!)

The fertility based on rolling 3 month average:

• Overall conception rate 43%
• 1st service 38%
• 2nd service 40%
• 2nd + 58%

The milking robots record vast amounts of information which are fed back to the computer which calculates whether she should appear on an action list, for example:

If the activity monitor in the collar measures an increase in activity and a decrease in rumination time the computer will calculate a percentage chance she’d be in season.

or

If there’s an increase in milk temperature, conductivity or decrease in production in any quarter she would appear on an udder health list.

The cow’s weight is also recorded on the weigh floor.

You will be thinking is the investment worth it? The way I look at it is this (in Scotland):

• Farm A will install a herringbone parlour and milk 200 cows 3x a day and get a rolling average milk sales/day of 33 litres
• Farm B a Robotic farm – bigger investment but 20% more milk sales/day

Then take into account:

• Cow health
• Comfort
• Longevity
• Fertility
• Labour cost
• FCE
• Foot health

All have more scope to be better on a fully robotic unit! Which essentially for you, allows you to run the other business!

There is another system already working on farms which can detect cows with acidosis, whether or not they are ketotic or even pregnant. Soon they will be able to scan and detect very early and accurately movement in body condition score.

Today the herd is being managed by myself, wife Lindsay who is responsible for recording all registrations and movements etc, and both girls are a huge help. We have two full time staff in father and son team Alastair and Kevin Weir responsible for tractor work and youngstock rearing.

The show season will soon be upon us again, we do try and exhibit whenever we can. Already this year we have an All Britain nomination in Ve-Tech Goldfish Kim which lead the Senior 2 year old class at UK Dairy Day in Telford last year.

Organisers of the conference I thank you for your kind hospitality and to you ladies and gentlemen for allowing me to tell my story.