Specialist nutrition expertise gets robotic milkers running smoothly

Robotic milkers have surged in popularity in recent years, now installed in 10% of UK dairy farms. With their potential to reduce labour costs and improve herd performance and welfare, it’s easy to see why sales are rising. One Welsh dairy farmer made the switch last summer for all the above reasons, but with a few unexpected bumps in the road…

Farmer Tomos Adams milks 60 pedigree Holstein Friesians on Llanfrynach Farm in Cowbridge, South Wales on a mixed farm. The year-round calving herd is fed 0.3kg of Maximum Match 18 concentrate per litre of milk produced through the robot, along with homegrown grass and maize silage as a TMR at the feed barrier.

Tomos aims to put good quality forage in front of the cows to drive production, using a mix of a two-cut and multi-cut silage systems. The newer leys on the farm are a mixture of Italians and perennials, as well as eight acres of Lucerne to help with protein.  

An issue arised

“The cows did really well for the first six months, but we started to see that they struggled to hit peak yield after they calved down,” he continues. “We were down to about 28L/cow at 170 days in milk and only getting about 2.8 milkings/day/cow – we just weren’t getting enough feed into them and couldn’t work out why. We tried to go to the manufacturer for support, but they didn’t have the nutrition expertise we needed.”

Robotic results

Since moving onto the robots, the Llanfrynach herd performance has increased substantially with cows now yielding 11,500L – 4,000 litres more than when they were being milked twice a day - and requiring only 0.32kg of concentrate per kilo of milk.

“Clive’s expertise with the robotic milkers was really valuable to us, as he was able to help us get the right amount of feed into the cows to allow them to perform as they should,” says Tomos. “It’s all about marrying the robot settings with the farm system to get the right results. Ed knows our individual set up and the cows, but he was also able to call on the robotic expertise of Clive to give us the best advice.”

He concludes, “We had a whole herd foot trim the other week, and the foot trimmer said that our diet must be absolutely spot on because the cows’ feet are in such good condition. I am taking that as a good sign that things are working!”