Boumatic Gemini fits the bill
Martin Brown farms in Staffordshire with his wife and 3 children, Henry, Grace and Magnus. In 2016 he suffered with ill health and had to take some time out, leaving the rest of the family to milk the herd of 150 Friesian Holsteins through their herringbone parlour.
“The children were still at school back then,” explains Martin,” and so it put us all under a huge amount of pressure.”
Thankfully, Martin made a good recovery but knew that something had to change to make life easier for him and the next generation. So, it was either a case of selling the herd or to look at installing robots.
He looked at various manufacturers and was considering 2 single boxes, to enable him to milk up to 120 cows before looking at The Boumatic Gemini, double box robot. These would allow him to milk up to 180 cows, but he liked the idea of running under capacity with 140 and not stressing the system.
”By opting for 2 double boxes we got the maximum milking output from our building, for the least cost and they also fitted in very nicely to our new layout” explains Martin.
So, the decision was taken to keep the cows and the robots started up in the summer of 2022, operating on a free access, housed system but with ability to route cows if necessary.
Gemini Features
· Collar identification with activity monitoring and rumination
· Quarter conductivity
· Blood detection.
Herd Performance
The herd are fed a PMR diet outside of grass silage, maize and a rape meal blend, which is worth M+27 litres and the remainder is fed through the robots.
Today he is milking 142 cows, averaging 34 litres with 3 visits per day. Importantly though, Martin runs the system with 25% free time on the robots, which means that there is no pressure on him or the robots.
Future plans are to work the yields up slightly and to get more milk per visit. Martin is also interested in grazing the herd next year, for part of the day on an AB system, as he does like to see cows out at grass as long as it is not effecting yield.
“Robots have been good for us as a family,” explains Martin, “at one stage I though that the cows would have to go, but this has future proofed our dairy farm, for the next generation.”