Reducing pinch points with the Robotic Analysis Programme

Robotic Specialist, Michael Duncan has been successfully using the Robotic Analysis Programme to support one of his customers, Dundraw Farm in Cumbria.

“At Dundraw Farm they are achieving nearly 10,000kg per day from 238 cows milked through four robots,” says Michael. “Since we started using the Robotic Analysis Programme just a few months ago, we’ve already been able to make some positive changes."

“Using data from the Robotic Analysis Programme I could see that there was a pinch point where the fresh cows were not getting milked frequently enough to reach their cake requirements and fulfil their yield potential.”

Knowledge
Dairy
Robotic Milking

Identifying, addressing and seeing results

To address this, Michael suggested restricting robot access to cows in the mid-lactation group. From April until May, daily robot visits for this group decreased from an average of 2.8 visits per day to 2.6 visits.

“As the number of milkings per day was reduced, this group of cows saw a steady increase in milk per milking. Their overall daily production also remained largely the same during this time period, despite the reduction in milkings.”

However, Michael explains that the real benefit was seen in the fresh cow group with their daily robot visits increasing from an average of 2.5 visits per day to 3.4 visits across the same time period.

Graph 1 RAP Robotic visits 1

“As we restricted the mid-lactation group, the fresh cows were able to visit the robots more frequently. These cows were able to increase their cake intake, which then had a positive impact on their milk per milking and their overall daily production."

“In just two months we’ve seen a substantial improvement in fresh cow daily production, rising from just under 40kg per day to pushing 50kg. This is particularly impressive as this was achieved just from a simple change to robot settings, which we identified using the Robot Analysis Programme.”

Graph 2 RAP daily production 2

Michael believes that the tool has huge potential to help other farms with their feed efficiency.

“The Robot Analysis Programme is a really exciting tool, which can benefit all of our automated dairy unit customers. At a time when input costs are continuing to rise, a tool such as this which can improve feed optimisation and help farmers make the most of what they already have, is invaluable.”

RAP facts and Dundraw