Upcoming Lely Grazing Open Day in Strabane

Based in Strabane, Gareth Mutch milks and grazes 66 crossbred cows on one Lely Astronaut A5 alongside four poultry units. This beef suckler conversion was built on a greenfield site, with a building tailored to a one-man operation. The herd has a forecasted 305-day average of 9,645kg per cow, butterfat 4.20% and protein 3.52%.

Gareth breeds all his own replacements trying to keep a closed herd, with breeding focusing on longevity and producing better quality beef calves. With a focus on rearing his own stores, he hopes to finish half of the beef calves in the near future.

The crossbred mix includes Shorthorn, Norwegian Red and Montbeliardes, with Gareth commenting, “we’ve no problems with feet, fertility is good’.

Alongside the dairy operation, Gareth has four poultry houses for MoyPark: “The robot works well with the poultry operation, you aren’t tied to milking.”

When Gareth made the decision to go with Lely robotics and signed the dotted line, he found the process from building to start up to be quicker than he originally thought, "We started building in June, we were training cows by December. It was a quick turn around, we found working with Lely’s project coordinators made the process straight forward.”

Gareth went on to say how "the Project Coordinators were excellent, if you wanted to change anything they were back on site to go through things. The whole thing was set up for a one man operation, everything flows well.”

The grazing platform Gareth opted for is based on an AB system, with ambitions to progress to an ABC system dependent on ground availability, "We use about 17 acres for grazing. They’re out for 12 hours per day and in house for 12.”

When starting up, Gareth had concerns that he would have issues with retrieving cows as they walk around one kilometer via lanes all up hill, but found this not to be the case, "The cows picked it up themselves, we haven’t collected a cow in two years.”

As well as the Astronaut, Gareth installed a Discovery 90 S/W. He states that "the scraper is the hardest working machine, it goes every hour. It never gets lost or stuck.”

One of the most common misconceptions about robotics is how often you will receive a critical alarm. Gareth highlights, from his experience, how few alarms he receives, "Very seldom an alarm would go, we have had very little issues. The last major alarm we had was just under a year ago.”

Gareth comments on Lely’s back up and their response times, "If you give one of the men a ring they’ll talk you through the issue, you can sort it yourself a lot of the time. Worst case scenario, they are here in a very short space of time.”

To find out more come along to 6 Carrigullin Road, Strabane, BT82 8NZ on Wednesday, 7th August between 11am and 3pm. For more information or to register your interest call Lely Center Eglish on 028 37548228, you can also register at the farm on the day.