FULLWOOD JOZ Farm Stories

Family team, Andrew and Marisa Baird, daughter Kirstie along with their son in law Alasdair, farm their herd of 200 autumn calving cows at Auchnotroch Farm in South Lanarkshire, Scotland.

“We have always looked to achieve as much milk from forage as possible”, explains Kirstie,” while maintaining a good yield. So, the autumn calving works well for us, as we get peak milk production during the winter months, before turn out in the spring, when we graze the cows for 24 hours a day.”

In 2019 the family started looking in to robotics as their 15/30 parlour was reaching the end of its life, but they were not sure how easy it would be to incorporate their grazing on a fully automated system. However, having fully researched the options they decided that an A/B gate would give them the flexibility that they needed to graze cows for up to 500 metres from the robots.

They looked at a few different manufacturer’s machines but decided on Fullwood Joz because they liked their flexible approach to servicing and maintenance from McCaskie Agriculture in Stirling. They are also members of costings groups and it appeared that the running costs of the Merlin2 were considerably less compared to other makes. So, four machines were ordered and installed at the end 2019 before starting up in January 2020.

The cubicle shed was set up on a free access system and very quickly the cows were averaging over 3 visits per day when they were housed. “We feed most of the concentrates in the robots explains Kirstie, which definitely helped to get the cows trained quickly on the new system. We keep it simple on the feed fence, where we are feeding top quality grass silage,0.5 kg of hay and 2Kg of caustic wheat.”

The herd turned out in the spring using the A/B gate to marshal the cows to the grazing 24 hours a day using an ABA system. So, cows have a fresh break of grass every 8 hours, but they do not have access to the cubicles or buffer feeding during this grazing period.

• Ear tag ID
• 2 feed concentrate dispensers per robot
• Twin exits from the robots to allow for grazing or housing
• 4 Quarter conductivity
  
   

In 2018 John Kerr & Sons decided to build their own, new cubicle housing for their herd of 220 Holstein cows at Kirklands Farm near Lanark. They decided on two buildings side by side to house 110 cows each, with feeding on the outside. “Four of us undertook the project,” explains Graham Kerr,” My father John, brother in law and my wife Kirsty, so it was definitely a complete family effort!” It took them a total of 8 months working on the project, from initial ground works to housing the cows in their new environment the following winter.

“We left 10 metres between the buildings to get really good ventilation,” explains Graham” and it also meant that we could feed on two sides of each building, which gave us enough space for locking yolks for every cow in the herd.” They opted to slat both buildings with two double rows of cubicles, water mattresses and wide passageways. ”Excellent cow comfort was paramount, for us,” explains Graham.

At the time they were still milking the herd through their 14/28 swing over parlour, but they knew that their herd would benefit from three times a day milking and so robotics seemed the obvious next step.

The family looked at various manufactures’ machines but decided on Fullwood Joz robotic milking, because they already had a good working relationship with McCaskie Agriculture in Stirling and they liked their flexible approach to servicing and maintenance.

Graham and Kirsty ordered four machines in 2022 and then set about building another shed to link both of the cubicle buildings together, so that they could run the herd as one group on four robots. Again, this was a project that they undertook themselves before taking delivery of the robots in March 2023. 

• 4QC: Quarter conductivity monitoring
• Aficollar: Acitivity, rumination and health monitoring 
• Full lab: Cell count and constituent monitoring
• Dual concentrate feeding Liquid feed dispensing

Graham and Kirsty decided that they would not install any automatic segregation at the robots, but would simply fetch any cows to the locking yolks that required treatment.

“We wanted to run the herd as one, on a free access system,” explains Graham,” We knew that we would have to collect some cows but we didn’t want to create any barriers for them in the shed. We quickly learnt that the more, free time you have, the less pressure it puts on the whole system and you fetch less cows. So, we now aim for at least 15% free time and that works well for us and the herd!” our record is 21 days without fetching any cows or heifers

“The other interesting point is that the heifers tend to stick together in one building and the more mature cows take themselves off to the other one,” says Kirsty.” They have also become much quieter, which is what everyone says about robotic cows.”

The herd is year-round calving with an average yield of 40Kg per cows per day, from 2.9 milkings per day, which equates to 2000Kg per robot per day. ”We also get 2 refusals or “not yets” per cow per day which means there is a good level of activity in the barn” continues Kirsty.

Geraint Owens farms at Argoed in Cenarth, near Newcastle Emlyn in Ceredigion, with his parents and young family. 

In 2014 he set about building a slatted shed with his father, to house 150 cows, designed with a view to accommodating robots in the future. By 2018 they felt that the time was right and they moved out of their conventional parlour and invested in two Fullwood Joz machines.

"The only down side to robots,” explains Geraint “is that your cow numbers are dictated by the robots, which for us is a maximum is 110 on two machines. So, we are now considering a third one so that we can maximise the output from our building.”