Welcome everyone to NSW DPI Dairy
Webinar 8:
'Robotic milking for sustainable dairy systems'.
My name is Nicolas Lyons, I will be your speaker today
I am the Development Officer
Robotic Milking Systems
within the NSW Department of Primary Industries,
this is a national role,
supporting technology adoption on
Australian dairy farms
with a particular focus, but not limited,
to robotic milking systems.
I hold a Bachelor of Ag. Science from Argentina
and a PhD in Animal Science with robotic milking
from the University of Sydney in Australia.
I've got over 10 years in public and
private organizations related to the dairy industry,
working in very close contact to farmers, researchers
and commercial companies to try to drive
technology adoption on Australian dairy farms.
This presentation is entitled
'Robotic milking for sustainable dairy systems',
and a bit of a background behind
this presentation.
I was once at a field day on a farm
and we started talking
with a farmer and a consultant about
what the future of the dairy industry could look like,
and what technology in the
future of the farms could look like and
how could technology provide an opportunity
for sustainability in the dairy industry.
So I started trying to
give some arguments of why did I think
robots were an option for the future of
dairy farming and therefore
we kind of ending up, or I ended up concluding
that I definitely thought the robots were going to be
a big part of the future in the dairy industry
and I ended up phrasing
that probably it was better to talk about
Sustainable dairy systems because
my particular view
was that probably robots were going to be a part
or a very big part or the norm of the future farms.
So therefore it's more termed
'Sustainable Dairy Systems'.
So I would like to start this presentation talking
a bit of the current challenges the
dairy farmers and the industry face
not only in Australia but also Overseas and
in many countries we work with.
Every time the herds are bigger,
so if we look in Australia for example
in the last 25 years the average herd size has
increased from around 80 cows to around 240,
so that's three times the size,
in the last 25 years.
Every time
there is more demand or more pressure on those cows,
so cows tend to produce more milk
and that puts more pressure on the health,
the welfare and the reproduction of those animals.
The farmers are faced with huge pressure for time
so dairying is a quite labour intensive activity
and if we look only at milking,
milking accounts for around 50% to 60% of the time
on a dairy farm.
So it's a huge pressure to milk more cows
and we're putting a lot of pressure
on the staff that have to
do those activities on farm.
So that's why we're finding very difficult
to attract or retain new staff or younger generations
to work on-farm in the dairy industry.
Because they don't find it attractive,
to be tied up to a repetitive task, a routine,
long hours of work that make it a lot of times
socially incompatible.
And also the pressures, the economic pressures
for profits are quite high
in the dairy industry.
So inputs are rising,
the price for milk changes throughout years and
across the year and that puts a lot of pressure
in the volatility and variability
of those costs and prices that the farmers receive,
that makes it challenging or difficult for them to
be sustainable as they move into the future.
So the big question is how will farmers
and the industry face these challenges,
not only now but also in the future?
Will we continue on the same path as we've been doing
in the past?
Will be continue managing larger herds
and putting conventional sheds to milk larger herds
in the same way as we've been doing in the past?
And I definitely think that
probably this is not the best way
to move forward and I definitely think that
robotic milking is here to stay.
Today we have 42 farmers in Australia
that are milking anywhere between
110 cows and 800 cows
with robots in pasture-based systems, indoor barns,
year round calving systems, seasonal calving.
So there's a quiet variety of
farms and systems operating with this technology.
if we look at more mature markets,
like the European countries,
where robot adoption started in the early 90's,
we see that in some countries
around 50% to 70% of all new
dairy installations are robots.
So I definitely think that robotic milking
is here to stay.
So what can a robot do?
Regardless of the brand or type of robot,
and we've conducted two webinars
some months ago that are available online,
of different type of robots,
all of them can identify cows,
can clean or prepare teats,
can identify or locate teats
and attach the cups,
all of them milk
quarters individually and record a lot of parameters
at an individual quarter level.
They are able to spray teats
after milking and direct cows
to different areas.
And also and most important,
all that information, procedures or tasks
are recorded and kept online on a computer,
so the farmer needs to spend some time
monitoring reports, graphs or values,
to understand what's happening on farm and
monitor what the cows or the herds are doing.
So the big question that came in
that conversation was what role will
robotic milking have
in the sustainability of the dairy systems in the future?
A very first important thing
is to define sustainability.
According to the World Commission on Environment
and Development, they defined in the late 80's,
that sustainable development regardless
of what type of development it was,
meant that it was a development that needed to meet
the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs.
So it means being able to do today
things and taking care of everything that needs
to be taken care of,
for those in the future to be able to do the same.
So when we look at the dairy industry,
we've commonly named
3 pillars for sustainability, or the triple
bottom line that define sustainability,
and I've added a fourth pillar,
just because I think it needs a differentiation
for robotic milking.
The first one, that is a bit different to
that traditional triple bottom line,
is the cow itself or the production of the system.
The second one is the environment
in which that system operates.
The third one is a labour or social aspect
to these systems and the fourth one
is an economic sustainability aspect
to these operations.
So now we'll try to cover these 4 pillars
and how robotic milking affects those 4 pillars.
From a production or cow point of view
the first question that many
farmers and consultants ask is:
Do robots offer a possibility to milk cows
more frequently and therefore obtain an
increase in milk production?
Definitely robots offer the possibility to
move away from the conventional twice a day milking
and milk cows more often.
But that does not always translate
to an increase in milk production.
When we look at the literature, the literature reports
between a 2% to 12% increase in production
compared to twice a day milking,
but also they mention that
many farmers when they
transition from conventional to robotic milking
they change a lot of things in the system,
so they cannot always
attribute this increase in production only to the robots.
Some literature reports between a 0% and 15% drop
of milk production in the first year.
And farmers looking to move into the,
into this technology
need to take this into account when considering
or making budgets.
And we've seen that the farmers
that have a lower drop in milk production
or recover quickly
are those that do the recommended homework.
So they know what they are getting into,
they visit operating farms,
they know how to prepare the farm, the staff,
the layout and the cows
to what is coming and they are prepared
for this change, in managing the whole system
and therefore minimize the loss.
We've also seen that heifers do not always respond
to an increase in milking frequency.
So therefore it's probably not needed
to milk heifers more frequently.
And we also see that there is
a variability in milking frequency both
within and between cows.
When we try to see what happens
in the Australian context,
DPI and I manage
a project that now is called the International AMS KPI Project,
in which we are monitoring,
19 farms throughout the world.
12 of them in Australia, 2 in New Zealand,
4 in Ireland and 1 in Chile.
And we monitor them on a monthly basis
to see how they are performing.
This is the second phase of a project
that started in 2015,
that was called the Australian AMS KPI Project,
where we were monitoring
9 Australian farms on a monthly basis.
These results on the screen
are a reflection of that Australian AMS KPI Project.
The first thing that we saw,
was that there was a wide range in results
that could be achieved on-farm.
So they were not two farms
that obtained the same thing,
and this depended
on the farm aims
and how they managed the system.
But in general we saw that, yes,
they achieved a higher milking frequency,
that sat on average in 2.3 milkings per cow per day.
And that was quite stable within farm
but it changed between farms.
Then we saw that 45% of these farmers
reported an increase in production
compared to when they were milking conventionally,
and that increase was around 5%.
This was anecdotal evidence
but they reported that.
And the average milk production
during those 12 months of those 9 farms,
was 24.1 kg per cow per day
of those cows that were milked 2.3 times per day.
Then we saw that they had a better health,
of the cows and milk quality,
and we saw that on average the somatic cell count
of cows milked, of these 9 farms,
was around 205,000 somatic cell count per millilitre.
So it was possible to achieve
a higher milking frequency,
a good or higher milk yield and very good quality of milk.
The other important thing
to consider with robots is that the
milking or cow traffic is voluntary,
so we do not rely on operators going to the
paddock and fetching the cows twice a day,
cows move voluntarily to and from the dairy.
And this cow traffic,
this voluntary cow traffic is based on incentives,
being feed the number one incentive
to encourage cows to move to and from the dairy.
So what we saw is that
these systems and cows moving
voluntarily on their own from the dairy
had a benefit from the production and
welfare point of view.
And these figures are from Australia,
the ones you see in the screen at this time.
We are able to manage cows individually
because you can have cows in early lactation
milking 2.3 - 2.5 times per day and cows
in early lactation milking 1.2 - 2 times a day.
So you can manage cows individually and
cows that have different requirements
can have different milking frequency
or different allocation of concentrates or whatever.
Then the fact that we can
attach cups at a quarter level
and monitor and milk them at a quarter level,
reduces the incidence of overmilking,
because once a quarter finishes milking,
you can remove the cup from that quarter
and continue milking the rest of the quarters.
So I think this has two great benefits
that are reflected
in the figures below.
50% of the farmers say that with robots they have
improved the milk quality and 50%
of them say that they've stayed the same.
And this is very important because
I think the robots only harvest milk
and enable the operators to achieve a lot of things,
but it is management that will determine
what farmers achieve.
So they achieve a higher milk quality
probably because they
reduce the overmilking of the quarters
and they able to do the consistent
milking routine every day of the year
and every milking in the same way.
It doesn't depend if the operator
turns up to milk on time, if it's raining,
if he wants to milk faster or whatever.
All the procedures take place in the
same way every day of the year.
And cows just love this consistency.
Then 45% of the farmers say that
they see an improvement in udder health,
whereas 18% of them say
that they've seen a decrease in udder health.
And this is completely possible
because as I said before
robots only harvest milk
and management is very important.
We see, or we tend to see
a decrease in udder health
soon after commissioning
because the farmers are learning how to manage the system,
and learning how to manage cow traffic.
There was research done within Future Dairy,
that they determined that cows that present themselves
to be milked with intervals
over 16 hours, so that is 16 hours
between two consecutive milkings,
tended to have a higher risk of mastitis,
and a lower proportional milk yield.
So if we cannot manage the incidence of high
milking intervals or long milking intervals
that can have a negative impact
in udder health and milk production.
And these things occur more frequently
soon after commissioning till
the farmer, the cows and everybody
learns how to manage the system.
92% of the farmers say
that they've seen a decrease and a
dramatic decrease in the incidence of lameness.
Because I think that the fact
those cows are moving at their own pace,
walking themselves to the dairy and
nobody is pushing them, has a dramatic incidence
in the amount of lameness on-farm.
From studies done
by a PhD student at Sydney University,
on conventional dairy farms
he monitored many farms in New South Wales
and he saw that some of the
two factors that caused
higher incidences in lameness were:
number one herding cows to the dairy,
so people herding large herds or herds
twice a day to the dairy
generally they pushed herds
in the laneway and that caused an
increase in lameness.
In robotic milking as cows are moving voluntarily,
this is reduced and therefore that's why we think
lameness is reduced.
And the second thing that caused lameness was
cow standing on concrete for a long time.
So we tend to say that cows should not spend
more than 1 hour ideally more than 2 hours definitely
standing on concrete,
and what we see is that as cows
have increased in herd size and the dairy
shed has not always kept up to speed
with that increase in herd size,
the milking takes longer and cows spend much
longer standing on concrete.
So therefore in a robotic milking system as cows walk
on their own and then do not always stand
in a queue because this offers the
possibility of cows not standing in a queue
arriving in the dairy, getting milked
and leaving.
We see that the amount of time they spend in concrete
gets dramatically reduced which we
believe has a strong impact on reducing
the amount of lameness in the herd.
And 91% of farmers have said
that they've increased their heat detection
and again we think that by being able
for the cows to move at their own pace
and show more natural behaviours,
it's easier for operators to
detect cows on heat.
But also to be fair a lot of the systems,
or the farmers the decide to install robots,
buy the robots with the technology to detect heat,
so that is through either activity or
rumination or combination of factors
that help the farmer detects which cows are
about to become on heat or are on heat.
Also they reported the cows that are on heat
or about to become on heat
are the ones that remain behind in the paddock
and require fetching, so it's easier to
find these cows.
So that's why we think
there is an increase in the heat detection.
It is also very important to understand
that with robotic milking we need
to work with the cow.
I think dairy farmers have become too accustomed
to pushing and locking cows up.
We have got used
to go into the paddock twice a day,
fetching cows, pushing them to the dairy, locking
them up in the waiting yard,
pushing them through the dairy shed,
lock them again in the feed pad,
pushing them back to the paddock
and locking them up in the paddock,
and repeating this twice a day,
every day of the year.
With this we require the cows
to move at their own pace and move
to the dairy and back to the paddock
and this requires working with the cow.
So one thing one farmer
told me once was that
farmers struggle to understand cow behaviour
and we've done a webinar in the past
with Joep Driessen from CowSignals
to try to understand cow behaviour
because farmers struggle to understand why cows
are doing what they are doing,
and why cows are not doing
what they want them to do.
So it's very important to start
to understand that we need to work with the cow.
So this slide that is in the screen at
the moment shows two studies conducted
by a PhD student at FutureDairy Sydney University
Miss Ashley Wildridge.
She did one trial where she put shade in
different points of the laneway,
and she tried to see what was the impact of
providing shade to the herd on cow traffic.
And she saw that providing shade
at different points in the laneway
encouraged or improved cow traffic and
improved animal welfare.
So this is an improvement that we can influence cow
behaviour but that cows respond to this cow behaviour.
So we need to see how do we move
or encourage cow traffic.
The bottom part of the screen shows
a second trial by Ashleigh
where she provided, she split the herd in two and
provided, half of the herd
access to shade in the pre milking waiting yard
and half of the herd
did not have access to shade in the
pre milking waiting yard.
And she saw that the cows that had access
to shade in the pre milking waiting yard
had an improved respiration rate,
so better animal welfare,
increased concentrate consumption,
because they did not have heat stress
and we see there is a
negative impact of heat stress on intake,
and they also improved milk production.
So by influencing conditions on the farm
we can improve cow welfare or production.
A third study that Ashleigh conducted
was trying to understand how cow behaviour
changed before and after commissioning robots.
So she visited five commercial farms in
Australia before commissioning AMS and
then one year after that, to understand
the comparison of how those cows behaved
after commissioning AMS.
And what she noted was three things:
with robots farmers spent less time
in direct contact with cows,
So they did not see all the cows twice a day
they only saw the cows that needed attention, so those
that in reports needed to be drafted and
looked at, or those cows that were fetched,
or those cows that were in the yard
when the operator turned up.
But they did not see a hundred per cent of
the herd twice a day.
And that is not necessarily a problem
because now you're starting to see
the cows that really require attention.
The cow that is doing
what she needs to do and moves and does
everything that needs to be done,
you do not see her, but probably you do not need to
see her either.
Then she noticed that cows
had a much shorter flight distance,
and flight distance is determined by the
distance
that cows allow people to get close to them
before moving.
So for example
there is 10 meters between you and the cow
and the cow is grazing,
if you step a step further you are 9 meters
close to the cow, the cow still is grazing,
if you make another step and now
you are 8 meters close to the cow,
and the cow moves, it means that that cow has
a flight distance of 8 meters
because she does not allow you
to get closer than 8 meters to her.
So what we saw is that cows on robot farms
or after commissioning robots had a shorter flight distance
so they allowed the operators
to get much closer than before.
And we think that this is related to the third
factor that is they have less stress,
so they lose fear of operators and they
start allowing operators to interact
with them in a different way.
So my question is probably with robots
we are able to keep cows for longer in the herd.
This slide here, or these numbers are
from a paper that was came up
from Delaval Cow Longevity Conference
in 2013 in Sweden, where Charlotte Hallen-Sandgren
presented some figures of
the replacement rate or culling reasons at
an international level.
She showed that 35-40% of the cows
were replaced annually on a dairy farm.
That 70-80% of the involuntary culling was due to health
or fertility reasons and the health reasons
were either mastitis or lameness.
And that 15-30% of the cows that left the herd
did so within the two first months of lactation.
So these are international figures, for example if we
look at into the replacement rates in Australia,
is probably around 25-35% on average.
There's a huge opportunity here to reduce this.
And we think that what
I've mentioned before what I tried to show you,
tries to address this.
So there's a lower incidence of mastitis,
a better udder health, a reduction in lameness,
an improvement in heat detection,
and by monitoring the cow and
having all these records in the computer
we can probably manage the herd individually,
and keep cows for longer.
So having a replacement rate of 30%-35%
means that we keep cows on the herd
only for less than 3 lactation on average.
Just imagine what could that mean for a farmer
or the industry if we could keep cows
for 4 lactations or more an average.
So I think robots have a huge opportunity here
to increase
the sustainability of the farm and the industry
by keeping cows longer.
The other aspect of production is the feed.
Pasture management is key because as I said before
having voluntary cow movement
requires to manage that incentive and
feed as I said before was the incentive number one,
that works on almost all the cows,
all year round.
So managing feed is key, and as a large proportion of
farms in Australia are pasture-based,
managing pasture and pasture allocation
is key to achieve those cow traffic targets.
And what we saw from research done by
FutureDairy and published by Cameron Clark in 2015,
was that there was within this farm
located in New South Wales,
there was to dairies side by side,
a conventional dairy and a robotic dairy.
Applying the same exact principles of
management of pasture, those two farms
are achieved exactly the same pasture utilization.
So both of them harvested
13.5 tons of DM per hectare,
So you can apply the same principles and achieve
exactly the same utilization with
conventional or robotic milking.
But when we look at what they achieved
in utilization, that's more than double
than the national average in Australia.
The national average of pasture utilization
is somewhere around 6 tons of DM per hectare.
So therefore it's not surprising that many
farmers that transition to robots believe
they are now growing and utilizing much
more pasture and this is probably
related to two things: one is
that they do not require to milk cows twice a day.
That time becomes available to do other things,
so now they can spend
more time focusing on reproduction,
health, general management of the business,
taking better decisions,
but definitely managing and allocating pasture.
Because that has a straight or
direct impact on cow traffic.
So now they start paying attention to this.
So I think that
by paying more attention to pasture allocation
they see or they perceive an improvement in
pasture growth or utilization.
so that was related to the cow or the production.
The second pillar of sustainability is
around the environment. And I think that
robotic milking has a strong impact here because
if you look at the slide
you see on your screen at the moment,
on the left you can see an aerial view of a
robotic farm in Tasmania that is split into 3 areas.
So now robotic farms
do not manage 100% of the herd
in the morning allocation that then
move to an afternoon allocation,
now there is traditionally three allocations
available to cows within a 24-hour period.
Is what we call three-way grazing
or ABC grazing.
And there will be a webinar in the future trying to cover
this pasture allocation.
But cows move or are offered
access to three allocations of feed
within a 24-hour period.
So now they move around this area,
and they come to the dairy at different times of the day,
so if you look to the right
there is a schematic layout of a robotic farm in
New Zealand that has two robots in those
two rectangular boxes on the right and
the other rest is the waiting yard.
So you have the access from the 3 layouts ,
Grass 1,2,3 and the herd comes to the dairy.
But as now you do not have
100% of the herd coming to the dairy
you do not need a pre milking waiting yard as big.
Because you're never moving cows,
in the laneway, 100% of the cows,
and you're never having
100% of the cows in the dairy
at the same time.
So this means
that you can potentially reduce the
amount of floor surface
in the dairy by up to 75%.
So this means less concrete,
so it's a lower investment cost,
but also less surface to collect
and manage water and effluents.
So this means that the amount of effluents that
are collected are lower.
Also anecdotally
what we see, or what we think we see is that
in a conventional dairy the
amount of effluents that are deposited
in different areas of the farm are
directly related to the amount of time
that the cows spend on that area.
So if they spend a third of the day in the paddock,
a third of the day in the laneway walking
to and from the dairy, and a third of the
day in the dairy, there will be a third
of effluent, that is manure and urine,
collected in each of those places.
In a robotic dairy cows move
at their own pace and they
spend a different allocation of time
in different areas, so what we think and
there is one student that is
going to start looking into that, is that
there's going to be much more effluent
in the paddock and distributed in three
areas per day, as you can see in that
layer on the left
and less effluent on the laneways
because they are walking are their own speed,
and much less affluent in the dairy,
because they are not waiting as long,
and there are not many cows
all together in the dairy.
So that is a huge opportunity for robotic milking.
The other one is cow laneways.
A lot of the farms that install robots
are transitioning from conventional dairy
to robotic milking, so they do not have
the possibility of changing the laneways
but if you're in a greenfield
and you need to install and plan the laneways,
you don't require very wide laneways.
There you have on a picture of the left,
both pictures are from Ireland,
but the picture on the left shows the 3 laneways,
from the dairy for paddock A, B and C.
Look at the width of the laneway,
you do not require 6 meters, you can do it with 2.
Look at the one on the right,
that's slightly over a metre,
because the cows are walking in a single file
to and from the dairy.
So at most you will need space for two cows
to walk to and from the dairy.
They almost walk like sheep in these systems.
The other aspect of robotic milking that is impacted
is energy consumption.
Back in 2015 we had a comment from farmers
that they had a higher energy
consumption with robots in Australia.
So what we did together with Dairy Australia,
the industry organization,
was to conduct energy audits on 12
Australian robotic farms.
And what we found was that there was an increase in
50% of energy consumption in robotic milking.
So whereas the average of conventional dairies
had 50 kWh per 1000 litres
the average of the robotic farm was around
75 kWh per 1000 litres.
So yes there was an increase,
but there was also a huge variability between farms.
So some farms were very efficient,
some farms were very inefficient.
When we look at the top 3
things that were consuming energy in the farm
we saw that they were the
same for conventional and robotic milking.
Milk harvesting, cooling and water heating.
And if you look at that graph on
the bottom right you see how the
energy consumption is distributed between
robotic milking in blue and
conventional milking in orange.
There was a much higher consumption in milk harvesting
that is the centre, the middle 2 bars
and much higher for robotic milking in
comparison to conventional milking,
and that is related to the
air compressors and the vacuum pumps,
having a higher energy consumption and
operating for 24 hours a day.
But there was a very similar
consumption for milk cooling
because the amount of milk did not change,
but there was a lower consumption for water heating
because now you do not require to wash
as many units or a big plant as you did before.
But the other conclusion was that there was
old and oversized equipment for AMS,
so most of the farms were bringing along equipment
that they had for the
conventional milking to robotic milking,
and this was not right. so that equipment
was old and oversized for the
requirements of AMS.
So the main difference was that
robotic milking operates for 24 hours a day
whereas conventional milking operates at 2 discrete
milking sessions a day.
and they are smaller.
So they require for example in milk cooling they
had the similar requirement for milk cooling
but they were oversized because
whereas conventional milking required to
cool down large volumes of milk quickly
after the milking session was ended,
robotic milking required to cool lower,
smaller volumes of milk but constant
throughout the whole day, so this is a
completely different requirement of energy.
So the equipment was not sized or
dimensioned for the conditions of robotic milking.
The other one was water heating.
For conventional milking you required to wash,
let's say you had a 12 or 14 herringbone,
you required to wash that
12-14 units twice a day,
whereas with robotic milking you could do probably
the same with two or three robots for
the same herd size, so you will need to clean
two or three units.
So there was a lower amount of water needed which
is also supporting the environmental aspect,
but also as you needed less water
you needed to heat up less water.
So you didn't require the
same amount of water heating.
So there was a great potential to reduce the
energy consumption and cost
and one of the conclusions was that
robotic milking was very well suited to
renewable energy sources.
But only one farmer in Australia at that time,
was using renewable energy sources and
this is an article that came out of that farmer,
in the Australian dairy farmer March 2017.
He's got solar and wind renewable energy sources,
he captures the energy with those sources,
he stores them in battery
and then depending the time of the year
or time of the day he can supply the whole
energy requirements just with
these renewable energy sources.
So one of the conclusions was farmers
should start thinking about this
because again it's lower requirements but spread
throughout the whole day.
So start thinking about this, some farmers,
so I already know that there's at least
three other farmers in Australia that have invested
in some sort of renewable energy sources.
So that was the cow or the
production aspect number one of
sustainability and the environment point of view.
The third pillar of
sustainability was the social,
and the big thing was,
Do robots have a positive impact on the social aspects?
When we look at the literature from Europe there
is around 20% to 30%
reported labour savings, up to some people
that report no total change in the total
labour requirement, but yes a shift in the
labour use, or how the labour was used.
So in 2014
there was a technical person
within FutureDairy, Juan Molfino,
that did labour audits on five commercial farms
in Australia where he audited them on a
monthly basis for a whole year.
And he found a 54% increase in labour efficiency.
So those have been published
as labour case studies that are available
on FutureDairy's website and
you can access them to find out how they operate.
But in a nutshell,
this are the five farms
and different things from those farms.
Look at the second last line,
with the amount of cows per full-time equivalent,
that they are managing,
between 100 and 273. When we compare that
to the regional average that corresponds to
conventional dairies in that same region,
so the farmers were across different regions,
we see that there's an improvement
of an average 54%.
So you can manage labour in a different way
and different farmers will capture
the labour savings in different ways.
Some farmers might not reduce the total labour but
allocate that labour in a different way,
some farmers might be able to reduce
the labour on-farm, some farmers
may choose to milk much
more cows with the same amount of labour.
So different farmers will capture those benefits
in different ways.
So the question is always
Do I think robotics will replace labour?
I think it really depends,
And probably I dont think it will replace labour,
but it will definitely make labour work in a different way
and hopefully in a better way.
Why? Because
on average the farmers in Australia have said
that 40% of them
see a decrease in the amount hours worked,
20% stayed the same and 40% increased.
So basically what
you're doing is replacing a manual labour,
manual task, of twice a day milking cows
and that tasks taking 50% to 60%
of the time on-farm on a daily basis,
to monitoring and managing the whole business.
So you can free up that time,
to do other tasks and that's
why I think they become better, there is better health,
better reproduction, better
production of cows and pasture,
because you are shifting that labour to do other tasks.
But the other important thing is that
60% of the operators
said that they had an increase
in the facility to attract and retain external labour
and I think this is very important
from the sustainability
point of view of the whole industry,
because tasks will change,
robotics won't change or replace labour,
but there is stills a lots of tasks that need to be done.
Robots at least currently,
cannot allocate pasture,
cannot fetch calves,
cannot fetch small proportion of cows,
that require fetching because they do not volunteer,
cannot change filters, cannot wash yards,
cannot allocate supplements,
so I think there's a little things that
still need to be done on-farm.
But if we look at particularly the
Australian conditions,
in Australia 98% of the dairies
are family-owned,
83% the dairy farms are owner-operated and
35% of the farmers do not employ external labour.
So I think it's not a minor thing
if you're going to increase the possibility to attract
and retain labour and have probably
higher skilled labour employed on-farm
or at least a lower rotation of the farm staff.
So I think this is a very
important aspect from the
social sustainability point of view.
The other social aspect that
I think is completely untapped
nowadays is the whole traceability.
Robots offer the
possibility to manage cows individually
and record or things individually,
to milk cows individually and record what's
happening at a quarter level,
and to have all these records on the computer.
So I think there's a huge potential to
monitor and record absolutely everything
at a quarter, milking, and cow level.
I think this will be quite appealing
to many consumers, if we can tell and track a story,
of food production
from the paddock to the plate,
I think this is very strong and very powerful,
not only from the health
point of view of tracing this
feed, this food produced
but also from a business point of view.
We can show people, we keep track of what is
happening to the milk that you consume,
but also to the cows where that milk is being produced.
So I think this is a huge opportunity
than not many farmers are tapping into.
And the fourth pillar of
sustainability is an economic point of view.
And the big question is, yes
robots are big in investment, how can I justify them?
What's the economic benefit of adopting robots?
So this is one farm
the did some economic analysis,
probably two or three years ago, and
those figures of the AMS farm are in the first column
and the third column is the average AMS farm.
Look at where the difference of that farm is,
how do they split the costs
for those farms.
There is a very similar income but look at the herd costs,
the herd costs are reduced almost to a third,
and that is better health,
better reproduction, lower replacement rates.
Look at the shed costs, yes they do increase
and almost by double because
you have higher energy costs probably,
as the energy audits mentioned and
there are reasons that explain it and
ways that could be reduce,
but there's also higher repair and maintenance,
but not because
there's only higher repairs and maintenance ,
also probably because not
many of the conventional sheds
are doing the recommended repairs and maintenance.
So you are not always comparing apples with apples
but on average, yes, repairs and maintenance goes up.
But look at the labour costs.
They're also reduced.
So I think this will depend on a farm
situation and I would encourage any farm
that is looking at any technology to
start putting the numbers and analysing
what's happening for
their own particular conditions.
So there is a very good program
based in Australia called DairyBase
and farmers are able to put the numbers in
and compare or benchmark
against different things.
We also now just finished collecting
financial and economic information
on 9 farms in Australia of robotic farms,
so we are currently analysing that
and that will provide the industry
with more information of how those farms are
performing and how are the whole cost,
income, financial structures
being changed with robots in comparison to
conventional dairies.
But the big question is, do I think
or does the industry think that robots are profitable?
So I split that question in two,
if I look at the farmers that are milking with robots,
there are currently 42 farmers, 9 of them,
so that is almost 25% of them,
had increased the amount of robots and cows
since they originally commissioned.
So let's say they started with 2 robots and 110-120 cows,
now they have 3 robots and 180-200 cows.
so they increased the robots.
And 72%
of the farmers surveyed in Australia that
are milking with robots would consider
expanding in the next five years.
So this tells me that, yes I do not know exactly
who those farmers are and the whole
financial thing behind them,
but I'm sure there is some element of
financial profitability
that would make them
confident to expand the adoption of robots.
And then I look at the rest of the industry,
and we did a survey,
back in 2015 and results are being published,
but 60% farmers in Australia think that by 2025
robots will be the fourth technology
that would have an increased adoption in Australia.
So the first one was
technology to detect cows in heat,
the second one was sorting or drafting gates,
the third one was elements or
technologies to manage and monitor milk quality,
the fourth one was robotic milking,
the fifth one was technology to measure
milk production.
So robots is high up there in the list,
but the other important thing to me is that robots,
can do in most of the cases,
all the other things.
So you can keep an eye on activity of the cows,
you can sort cows, you can measure things at a
quarter level, you can record production.
So it enables farmers to manage things differently.
In the same survey we asked farmers
if they would consider robots and
72% of them said that
they would consider robots as an option
if today they had to install a new dairy.
So this does not tell me
that they would definitely install robots
but they will the least consider it.
And I think that is very important,
robots are a proven technology and robots can work,
there are 42 farmers doing it in Australia,
more than almost 30,000 farms all around the world,
with different scale, different systems,
pasture-based, indoors,
small herds, large herds, family owned, corporate
that are milking with robots so they are an
option for you to consider.
And is there still potential for robots?
I think definitely there is?
In that Australian KPI project that I showed you
the milking frequency, yield,
and udder health at the beginning,
we monitored how cows traffic to the dairy.
So this is, in this graph the hours of the day,
and on the vertical graph
the number of milkings per robot.
So this shows how many milkings are the robots
performing across the day and is a
reflection of how cows are coming to the
dairy to get milked.
And it shows that in early hours of the day
let's say around 4 a.m. the robots are
performing 1 to 2 milkings per hour,
whereas in the afternoon,
six o'clock in the afternoon
they're performing 7-8.
So let's say we could potentially manage cow traffic
and make cows come all throughout the day
and achieve 7-8 milkings
throughout the whole day,
we have the potential to increase the number of
milkings, cows or litres that a robot can
harvest or manage by up to 60%.
So is a huge potential
that farmers could tap into, and as
research and development organizations
in Australia we need to see how do we
help farmers to achieve this.
Because this would bring the investment costs down.
Because what would this mean for
the average farmer in Australia?
The average farmer in Australia today is
investing in four robots for 200-220 cows,
they could do the same with 3 robots.
This will be reducing
the investment costs by 25%.
So I think this is a huge potential that
we need to consider.
So as a conclusion,
I definitely think robotic milking is here to stay,
I think the
first robot that milked cows was in 1992 in The
Netherlands, the first robot that milked
cows in Australia was in 2001,
it is not a new technology, farmers are looking at
this technology and this technology is here to stay.
The technology has an impact on the
whole system, so it has an impact on the cow,
on the farmer, on the environment and
on the industry, so we need to see how
the technology impacts this and how do we manage it.
Farmers and Industry need
to be prepared for a great change and we
need to see how do we support, and that
is a very part big part of my role,
the industry and the farmers to prepare for
this great change and be successful in
the adoption of this technology.
Management is key because as I said before
robots only harvest milk,
the farmer needs to manage the system, so we need to
see how do we manage to be able to
achieve very good results.
And definitely I think, going back to this main webinar
that robots can have a positive impact on
sustainability. Why? Because if we put
robots in the centre, the robots can
address factors over the cow
and the production, they can address
factors of the environment and the system,
they can achieve and address
social or labour aspects and
they can target economic benefits.
We still have to work a bit in the economic aspect,
but they can definitely address these four.
So I hope this webinar has addressed some
of the concerns, I have seen many questions
come through the chat box or the
question box, I hopefully have addressed
most of them, but if there's any
question please let me know and I
will try to address it.
So feel free to add questions on your chat box now.
I will unmute all of you.
If anybody wants to speak up
and ask a question or make a comment,
please feel free.
Ok I cannot see any question so I want to thank you
very much all of you for joining,
I hope this has been an informative webinar,
I would like to point you to two resources
that we manage. I manage and coordinate
the NSW DPI Dairy Facebook
page so there's more than 700 people
from all around the world and we share
regular updates on smart farming and
technology, feel free to follow and like
that page, it's a very valuable
information of general information about a
lot of the things and activities or
resources we provide.
There's also a NSW DPI Dairy AMS newsletter
that has more than
400 subscribers, again farmers and service
providers from all around the world,
that goes out three times a year,
next edition is in May so please feel free
to tap into that and follow what we
are doing because there are excellent
resources that are available to you.
So as with all our webinars this webinar has
been recorded and will become available
on the new NSW DPI Dairy website.
So here on the screen you will
be able to see the link,
I would encourage all of you to visit the
NSW Department of Primary Industries website
where you will be able to access
tools and resources about the dairy
industry. In there, there is a specific
section on robotic milking system and
that link on your screen is that
specific section that includes a lot of
information not only in robotic milking
but also in precision dairy farming.
So once again thank you very much for
joining today and I hope to see you next
time on our next webinar.
Thank you very much. Bye.
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