Penybont

Dairy farmers are increasingly looking to robotic milking systems (AMS) for a number of different reasons and many industry experts believe that the availability and standard of dairy staff is a major threat to the dairy sector. Dairy farming in Wales has a strong advantage with its ability to grow grass which enables farmers to take advantage of the economic benefits of grazing. The use of AMS in general has resulted in many cows being housed or time spent grazing being reduced.

The project will seek to explore grazing with AMS, this will involve looking at setup of grazing areas and how grass is managed, cow flow and distance, milking frequency and feeding as the motivator for cow movement.

Project aims:

• The project will look at best practice in setting up a grazing system for Robotic milking. The host farmer has not installed robots as of yet and these will be installed late summer 2018.
• The project in joint working with AHDB will run an open cow signals event May 2018 looking at installing robots into an existing shed setup.
• The project will explore how grass is to be managed and the best setup to ensure grass is the motivator for milking frequency.
• The project will look at AB (two-way grazing) or if possible ABC system (three-way grazing). A two way system results in 12 hour allocations encouraging cows to be milked twice a day. A three way system has 8 hour allocations encouraging cows to be milked 3 times a day.