AB Grazing with VMS

Michael Williams farms at Fagwrfran East, near Fishguard in Pembrokeshire with his parents and his family, where until 2017 they were milking through a 10x20 herringbone parlour.

With a young family, he then felt that he wanted a better quality of life and decided to install 2 DeLaval VMS Classic robotic milking systems in a new building designed for a feed first, guided system. In this way, once the cows have been milked, they return to feed or the cubicles. The cubicles are in the middle of the building and access to the two feed fences through one-way gates. They then have to pass through smart selection gates, to either access the robots for milking or to re gain access to the cubicles.

The system worked so well, that in 2019 he extended the shed to house 150 cows and installed an additional machine.

• Ear tag identification.· 
• Quarter conductivity· 
• Blood detection. · 
• Herd Navigator which was retro fitted to provide progesterone monitoring and replaced the original pedometer system. It is now relied on completely for heat detection. This also provides mastitis and Ketosis detection.
  

 The aim is to produce 1800 litres per robot per day with 150 cows in milk averaging 36 litres. Michael feels this is a good balance between getting the right return on his investment and not overloading the machines, which can cause stress on the system. “I like to have about 15% free time on the system ,” explains Michael “ so, if one machine should shut down for some reason in the early hours of the morning, then I know that it can wait for a few hours before I get there to sort it out.” 

The guided system means that Michael only trains heifers for about 3 days before they get used to the system and start visiting the robots themselves. There after no animals are fetched. 

 Fagwrfran is a First Milk supplier and is part of their Regen scheme, which means that cows have to graze for 6 months of the year. This is achieved with the use of a grazing gate at the end of the cubicle shed, which allows cows out of the building from 8am to 4pm, if they have recently been milked.

They then have access to a designated paddock where they strip graze, but also have the option to return to the shed at any time for milking, before returning to the paddock for more grazing. The cows remain in the building at night and in this way the herd maintains a visit rate of 3 milkings per day when they are at grass, with an impressive average yield of 36 litres per cow.