IN A quiet valley in the heart of northern Tasmania a revolution is taking shape. From the outside the Dornauf farm in the Quamby valley just outside of Deloraine looks much like any other.
A centre pivot irrigator cuts a circle across the paddocks, wide tracks push out through the farm and a dairy complex sits centrally and with easy road access.
But the dairy and its yards do not look like any other.
The dairy is a familiar rotary style but where people would normally stand are five robotic arms with odd red laser lights reflecting off the stainless steel. The yards look like some kind of complicated maze - with cow races and yards punctuated by one-way gates.
This is no ordinary farm: this is the world's first commercial installation of the robotic rotary or Automatic Milking Rotary (AMR).
The AMR is Australia's own technology, developed by the FutureDairy project at Camden, NSW, a collaboration between DeLaval, Dairy Australia, NSW Department of Primary Industries and the University of Sydney.
The family
For the Dornaufs it marks another milestone for a family business that has grown from a 60-cow farm in 1964 to one that compromises four farms, milking more than 1350 cows, and a restaurant, employing 40 people.
The dairyfarming side of the business includes family members Ian and Jenny, their son Chris and his wife, Lyn, and their son Nick and his partner, Rebekah Tyler. Ian and Jenny operate the home farm at Moltema, Chris and Lyn operate another farm at Moltema, a manager operates a third farm at Weegena and Nick and Rebekah operate the new farm at Deloraine. Jenny does the books for the whole operation, including the restaurant, which is managed by Chris's sister Lindi.
Why robots
Nick, Chris and Rebekah are the key operators at the Deloraine farm and the adoption of the AMR.
"I have always been curious about robots," Chris said. "But the idea of lining up 10 boxes - or whatever we would have needed - in a row didn't seem like the logical way to do it."
The family jumped at the opportunity to be the pilot commercial farm for the AMR when approached by DeLaval and its northern Tasmanian dealer Agri Tech. "I think my family all love a challenge," Chris said.
"I love the animal side of it - the animal psychology. I find that really fascinating. We are actually trying to cajole animals to do what we want them to do without forcing them to do it.
"I think that's really what this whole project is about - not the technology. I think robots can milk cows and they have been doing in Europe for years, but that's not the issue. It's about getting them in our pasture-based system in Australia and New Zealand.
"The great challenge is creating and managing a voluntary cow traffic system that utilises the pasture-based dairying systems of Australian and New Zealand, to get them to integrate that technology into a system that allows us to monitor rather than control."
Nick, a Melbourne University agricultural science graduate and qualified dairy nutritionist, is also relishing the challenge. "I jump out of bed in the morning," he said. "It is really exciting to be adopting new technology and challenging the paradigms of dairyfarming. There's lots of intellectual stimulation for me."
Both see robotic milking as critical for the future of the industry.
"I personally have a view if we don't go down this path, we won't get the people we need to milk cows in Australia," Chris said. "I don't see our kids' generation getting up at four in the morning to get s..t all over them when they can get a job behind a computer."
Nick said the move into robotic farming would help them attract, recruit and retain labour in an environment of ageing skilled management. He is hopeful that these types of technologies could help attract young people into dairyfarming.
It would also allow more flexibility about how the farm was managed and for the people operating that farm. After he left university Nick worked part-time as a consultant for Andrew Angelino and once this farm is up and running plans to return to consulting part-time.
But more importantly, he said, the AMR would allow him and his father to concentrate on the core part of the business - managing the cows and the whole farm system - rather than managing milking. In particular, the farm system's ability to allow individual management of cows in a large herd through the data generated would bring huge benefits.
Farm set up
The Dornauf Deloraine farm is a green-field site. The family bought the 260ha farm in 2000 to use as a dry-stock block. Once development is complete, it will have an effective milking area of 200ha.
The farm has a 600-megalitre irrigation dam, which feeds one 55ha centre pivot irrigator. The Dornaufs plan to install a further 75ha of irrigation next season to accommodate the growing herd size.
The family started milking at the farm in August when 220 heifers calved down. These were milked through a 15-unit one-sided herringbone that was constructed inside the shed alongside the rotary. This is now used as a facility for artificial insemination (AI) and pregnancy testing. In future it will also be used to manage the sick herd.
The rotary started operating in November but without the robots, with Nick and Chris milking about 150 cows an hour.
The full robotic dairy started operating in late February at about the same time as 50 February-calved mixed-age cows, which were empty cows from the other farms that were mated to bring onto the new farm in the autumn, joined the herd.
The cows were then batch-milked through the robotic rotary - with small groups of animals being brought up to the dairy and milked by the robots, while the Dornaufs and the support crew from DeLaval worked through some of the teething problems and 'trained' the robots in the location of each cow's teats.
Chris said this was an advantage of the AMR over the box-type Voluntary Milking System (VMS). "The semi-voluntary nature of robotic rotary is bonus," he said. "With boxed robots you would have to go voluntary from the start and I'm sure that causes a lot of heartache and probably a huge hit in production."
By mid-April the Dornaufs were ready to move to voluntary milking and planned to have full voluntary milking in place for the autumn and winter, with a further 40 heifers due to calve into the herd in the autumn.
An additional 50 will come into the herd in spring and another 50 next autumn and so on, until it reaches the optimum 500 to 600 cows for the fully developed property.
"We are deliberately building slowly - developing the cows, dairy, irrigation and farm at the same time," Chris said.
Robotic rotary operation
The AMR is based on a 24-unit internal, herringbone rotary, which allows the robots to approach the cow from the side in front of the back legs.
A cow moves onto the platform and is rotated into the first position, where the first Teat Preparation Module (TPM) robot prepares the two right teats, with a rinse, dry and stimulation. It is then rotated into the second position, where the second TPM robot prepares the two left teats.
The cow then moves into the third position where the first Automatic Cup Attachment (ACA) robot attaches cups to the two back teats. It then moves into the fourth position where the second ACA robot attaches cups to the two front teats.
Cameras sit above the cows in all four positions to monitor the movement of the cows and relay that information to the robots so that they can find the teats faster. The robots use laser technology that transmits the distinctive red light to locate the teats and either clean them or attach the cups.
DeLaval's AMR systems specialist Ron Mulder, who was one of the DeLaval team that has worked closely with the Dornaufs, said the system did quarter-milking with four separate milk lines that each monitored blood, conductivity and production. This produced more reliable data than a composite sample produced when there was only one milk line.
Each cup is automatically removed as the quarter finishes milking.
The final robot operates in the last position on the platform. This Teat Spray Module (TSM) robot sprays teats accurately to ensure the best possible coverage with the most efficient use of teat spray.
This robot operates with different technology: an optical or time-of-flight camera is used instead of a laser to locate the teats.
The cow then exits the platform and the Cup Flush Module rinses out each cup to ensure no cross contamination between cows.
Smart gates
The design of the dairy yards plays a key role in the AMR's operation.
The yards comprise a series of smaller yards, separated by Smart Selection Gates (SSGs) - automatic gates that can draft cows in two or three different directions. It looks like a complex maze but the cows move around the system seamlessly.
The whole system works around automatic identification collars or transponders that each cow wears. Each time a cow approaches an SSG, it reads the transponder and directs the cow in the direction set in the DELPRO herd management program.
This is used in myriad ways:
- to allow a cow to move onto the platform for milking; for example, cows that are part of the sick herd or that have not had sufficient time since the last milking will be drafted out of the yards;
- to direct a cow that had kicked off a cup in milking or where the robot did not attach a milking cup properly back onto the dairy to be milked again;
- to direct cows to the appropriate part of the farm; for example where the next pasture is available or if it is a member of the sick herd into a different section of farm;
- to auto draft animals for treatments or artificial insemination; or
- to direct cows to the out-of-parlour feeders or the feedpad.
