GEA 10 Robot Installation
Cotton Abbots Farm
In March 2024 Andrew Walley of Cotton Abbots Farm, just outside Chester, started up 10 GEA R9500 robots to replace his ageing rotary milking parlour, to milk his herd of 500 pedigree Holsteins. They were already milking three times a day and so robots just seemed like the natural progression.
He involved his Herd Manager, Warren Thomasson every step of the way with the decision making as he was going to be the one running the unit.
Why GEA?
We considered various brands,” explained Warren,” but in the end it came down to the R9500’s smaller footprint, its ability to separate milk per quarter, as well as the in liner pre and post milk preparation which swung it in GEA’s direction.”
Layout
They decided to form one group of 150 heifers on three robots, with the main herd of 300 cows on six machines and an additional freshly calved group of up to 45 cows, all operating on free access but with a guided exit.
“We knew that we wanted to incorporate foot bathing, explains Warren, but we didn’t want it positioned on the exit of every robot or otherwise it was going to add a significant cost to the project. It can also cause a bottleneck when cows are leaving the robots and so when we saw the guided exit, which allowed the footbaths to be positioned well away from the robots, it seemed like a really good solution.”
It seems that every small detail was considered here to train animals to the system and so the heifer group enter the robots from the right-hand side and the fresh group enter from the left. So, by the time that they arrive in the main herd, no animals have a preference for right or left-handed machines.
They also liked the idea of a pit so that they could treat any cows in the box, or manually attach if necessary and so this was incorporated in to the design of all 3 groups.
GEA Dairy Robot R9500 Specification
- Quarter conductivity
- Blood detection
- ID via Cow Scout collars which includes eating time
- Central vacuum system
- Cell count monitoring was available but not selected
“We decided not to go for the cell count monitoring,” explains Warren because we have the quarter conductivity and so if we see a spike in any quarter, we just separate the milk and test it ourselves.”
Nutrition
The fresh calvers and main herd are fed for M+37 litres outside on a ration of maize, grass silage and blend, before being fed to yield, in the robots up to a maximum of 12kg of concentrates. A dose of liquid feed is also given to the fresh group, in the robot in order to help bridge the energy gap at this stage of their lactation
Herd Performance
The main herd is currently averaging 2.9 visits per day with an impressive average yield of 47 Kg per cow per day and a milk speed of 3.1Kg/minute.
“It’s a fine balance between milking cows too often,” explains Warren, “which can use up valuable box time and getting the most out of the cows. The average yield per visit is 15.7 Kg which seems to be the optimum for us.”
In addition, there is still 20% free time on the robots, when they are not milking which means that there is no stress on the system.
The heifers are averaging 35 litres each with the same level of visits but as they are calving at around 22 months and so Warren is keen to make sure that they are well looked after in their first lactation. “They are still growing and so we don’t want to work them too hard, “he explains,” and so some of them do two lactations in this group before joining the main herd.”
Labour
The whole unit of 500 milking cows, with associated dry cows and followers is run with five labour units. Warren is proud of what they have achieved here and when asked if there was anything that they would have done differently, he thought for a while before replying, “Not really, in fact it’s going so well, I am not sure what I do anymore!”
Warren seems totally relaxed in his new environment and there is no doubt that he is doing a great job of fine tuning the herd, with all of the new technology. This is reflected in the cows who seem very quiet and totally content with their new robots.