Parlour to robot conversion
"He'd done it before, and you could tell."
The farm: 300 cows. 5 robots. Converted from a twice-a-day parlour.
Where we started
This wasn't a herd with problems to fix. The cows were high yielding (around 41 to 42kg), healthy and productive, with a pregnancy rate of 30%+. The job was to move them onto a completely different system without losing any of that.
In the parlour they'd been fed 2 to 3kg of cake at most. On the robots the cake fed has gone up significantly, which is natural in a free access system. And all of this has happened with a milk price under 30p.
Why it matters
There's a big misconception about feeding robot cows. It's assumed you need a high energy, really palatable cake to get cows to the box. You don't. A cow with a healthy, settled rumen and a good appetite will walk to the robot on her own. A fancy robot cake can't make up for a rumen that isn't right.
What we did
The starting point was the rumen, not the robot. We balanced the fibre and starch sources across the whole diet, the diet at the feed fence and the robot cake together, so the rumen stayed stable through the day however often a cow visited. Then we made sure there was enough metabolisable protein to support the yields these cows were capable of.
The robot cake has a job to do, and it doesn't have to be the fanciest thing on the farm. Its main job is supporting the rumen alongside the diet at the feed fence. That also kept the cost sensible, which mattered with a milk price under 30p.
The transition has taken time, for the cows and for the farm team's routine. That's normal on a conversion. The answer isn't to chase visits with fancy robot cake. It's to keep the rumen steady and let the cows find their rhythm. Consistency is key.
The result
A year on from moving off the parlour, through a low milk price and an extremely hot summer, the switch to robots has been a success. Cows have settled well and performance has improved. The herd is consistently averaging 45kg a day at 3.1kg of milk solids. Pregnancy rate has held at 30%+. One cow has recorded 107kg in 24 hours, with a number of others over 100kg. Feed rate through the robot is steady at 0.17kg per litre, with an overall feed rate of 0.37kg per litre.
If you're converting
- Start the ration changes before the robots go in, not on the day
- Don't try to solve a visiting problem with cake alone
- Keep your forage quality and consistency high. It's the base of everything
- Watch the rumen: dung, cudding and butterfat tell you more than the milk tank in the first weeks
- Use the robot data once cows settle. Match cake to the cows that need it
In their words
"Moving from the parlour to robots worried us. Dylan had been through it before and it showed. His advice is practical, nothing complicated. He kept us getting good milk from our forage and he's always on about rumen health."
Farm owner, Shropshire