Better herd performance with Lely Astronauts

Paul Mc Aleece runs the Ultimo farm with his father Bertie and herdsman Colin Givans. They milk the 360 cow herd through six Lely Astronaut A5 milking robots.
By The Newsroom
Published 4th May 2021, 08:31 BST

Paul, Colin, Philip Abernethy from Parklands, David Mawhinney from Key Nutrition and Maurice Wylie, Farm Management Support LC Eglish outlined in a virtual meeting on Thursday evening past, how the farm has benefited from installing the Lely Astronaut A5 milking robots, Discovery slat scrapers and Coxmix out of parlour feeders.

Paul had a desire to find a more data driven approach to help manage the dairy herd. He selected Lely as his partner in robotic milking to help achieve this goal.

Philip has been working with the farm for 14 years and since they installed the Lely system he has noticed improvements in the reproduction and health status of the herd: “I do general herd health work and fertility work on the farm. Paul uses the collars exclusively for AI of all cows and I’ve seen a much higher in-calve rate. Out of 10 cows Preg Checked there would be an average of nine in calve, the calving index is around 380 to 390 days. The integrated rumination and activity collars have also allowed the farm to get an early warning if a cow is getting sick or taking mastitis even before there is any physical signs of illness. This has resulted in earlier treatment which is a lot more successful.”

Paul confirmed that he’s a big fan of the data: “I can pick up problems in the herd at my breakfast on the phone before I even get to the farm. If a cow has not ate all her feed in the robot, has lower rumination and lower activity I know there is a problem with her and I’ll select her to go to the separation area where it will be easy for me to treat her quicker, a lot of the time it is an early case of lameness. I treat lame cows straight away, we also footbath every day.

“We all work in a less stressful environment and the staff get in a bit later in the morning and go home a few hours earlier in the evening, so it’s taken the pressure off, it is more relaxed and flexible work,” commented Paul.

David outlined the feeding strategies and is a big fan of the integrated system:“Yields can range from 60 kg to 20kg per cow and to get the cows visiting the robot the herd was transitioned from 10 kg’s at the feed fence to 3kg’s of blend, plus the stale cows don’t get overfed.

“They get up to 8kg’s in the milking robot so it keeps them coming to the robot, but they don’t take up too much time which allows the robot to milk the maximum number of cows. They are then topped up in the Coxmix out of parlour feeders to yield as needed.”

This whole system is integrated and easily adjusted with the farm management software system T4C/Horizon. “The farm has their own machinery for making silage allowing them to make consistently good silage at 30% DM and 12 ME. The current partial mixed ration (PMR) is good quality first cut silage with a chop length of about two inches, 3kg blend and ½ kg of pre-chopped straw. The herd crossed a milestone recently producing 12,000 litres of milk per day,” said David.

Paul concluded: “Yield has gone up from 9,700 to 11,200 but the feed rate dropped slightly to 0.34 kg per litre, herd health and fertility has improved and the work is more enjoyable.”

For anyone who missed this or previous virtual open days visit lely.com/gb/centers/Eglish.

For more information call Lely Center Eglish on 02837548228.