LELY Farm Stories

Robert and Bryony Symms farm near Sherbourne in Dorset with their son Jake. Three years ago, they decided to install four Lely A5 robots, to milk their herd of 250 Holsteins.

” Our parlour was still in good working order”, explains Jake “but we were spending too much time putting cups on cows, rather than doing more important management tasks, so robots were just the next logical step, to improve herd health and production.”

The four robots were retro fitted at the end of their cubicle housing to milk two groups of 110 cows each on a free access system. They knew the importance of regular foot bathing on a housed system, but did not want them placed on the exit of each robot as it can affect cow flow. So, the Lely Center in Yeovil came up with a design which allowed two robots to access one footbath, which was positioned away from the robot exits.

“With this layout we can select how often we want to footbath and so currently we do it three times a week, but it doesn’t affect cow flow on these days, because the baths are far enough away from the robots,” explains Jake.

The cows have always been bedded on sand, so Robert and Jake were keen to continue with this when the robots were fitted. ”We know it’s the best bedding material for our cows,” explains Jake “and so we were determined to make it work with the new system, even though we knew it would cause more wear and tear on the robots.” As a result, they fitted chains instead of cord ACR’s and they scrape the slurry out twice a day with a tractor, into a lagoon. So, there are no slatted channels anywhere in the building.

Jake uses Kite consulting for all of his nutrition advice and currently the herd are fed for Maintenance plus 28 litres outside, with a mixed ration of maize, grass silage and blend before being topped up in the robots up to a maximum of 10Kg per cow per day.

 The yield increased significantly when they went on to the robots due to the additional milkings and after 12 months they were averaging 43Kg per cows and producing around 2300Kg per robot per day. In turn, this bought another challenge in terms of machine capacity and a lack free time (time when the robots are not milking cows) when they were targeting 55 cows on each machine. ”The problem was we were getting under 10% free time and so we were fetching more cows” says Jake “and when the machines were being serviced it took a long time to catch up.”

The Lely centre in Yeovil suggested changing the silicone liners to rubber ones as this would increase the milk speed and so reduce box time. The results were good and bought the average milk speed up to 3.1Kg per minute but it did mean that the liners had to be changed every fortnight instead of every 8 weeks. Then, in April this year, Lely launched their silicone Scarler liner, designed for high yielding cows and so Jake tried them on his A5’s. The result was the milk speed increased to 3.6Kg/minute which gave them 11% free time with the same level of production and they only had to be changed after 10,000 milkings.

Matthew Jones and family, farm their herd of 120 Freisian Holstiens just outside Carmarthen in west Wales. They started thinking about robotic milking in 2016, because their existing 10 x 20 parlour was becoming outdated and the capital cost of installing two robots was similar to a new conventional milking parlour. However, other investments had to take priority at that time, which included launching a milk vending operation, Y Stand Laeth.

In 2024 they re-visited the possibility of installing robots, working with an ABC grazing system. “We took a trip to Ireland with Lely robotic milking and returned, convinced that the system could work us,”explains Mathew,” and so we went ahead and ordered two A5’s and a grazeway gate.”

• Activity monitoring and rumination 
• Cell count monitoring
• Quarter conductivity and blood detection
• Liquid feed dispensing
  

Gerallt Woolley and his family farm at Rhosfawr, just south of Aberystwyth.In 2015 they were at a crossroads, as their parlour was reaching the end of its life but they were not convinced that robotic milking was the right option for them.

We have Friesian Holstein cows”, explains Gerallt,” and I have always been a big believer in grazing, so robots didn’t seem like an option, as I had only seen them working with housed systems.”

However, when he was offered a trip to Ireland with Lely, to see their robots working with grazing, he took the opportunity and returned full of enthusiasm in the knowledge that this could work successfully for his heard of 65 cows. robotic milking

Start up took place in November that year, which gave the cows 5 months to get used to the robotic milking before turnout the following spring.

“Initially, the cows weren’t too keen on going through the grazing gate”, explains Gerallt and so we had to push them through, but within a few weeks they got the hang of it”.

Over 10 years the cows have got better at travelling to the grazing blocks and back to the robots for milking. The grazing gate changes at 7am for access to the day paddock and then at 3pm to access the night paddock, where they walk up to 500 metres. 

The herd now averages an impressive 3.4 visits in 24 hours on their AB system, averaging 30 litres per cow/day, with up to 8kg of concentrates a day and no buffer feed. So, its a simple but very effective system with minimum herd management input.