Trigg dairy farm using Ballarat innovation for self-sufficiency

Using a combination of state-of-the-art technologies, the Trigg dairy farm in Bungaree, Vic, could soon be almost fully self-sustainable, using manure to generate electricity.

The dairy already uses a robotic system to automatically milk 350 cows - each has a microchip implanted, and when a cow feels it's ready to be milked, it approaches a crush which scans the chip.

Cups are attached to teats with a robotic arm, which also disinfects and cleans the equipment, while the amount of milk is recorded digitally, providing valuable data on each cow down to each individual teat.

Farmer Mark Trigg said all he and his team had to do was clean up after the cows and maintain the robots.

"It does cell count, so the white blood cells, and that gives an indication of mastitis and whether we have to draft her off and check her," he said.

"That does a report on the computer, we can bring it up - it's amazing how much information we've got."

However, keeping a robot dairy going takes a lot of electricity.

About five years ago, the farm installed a huge shed to keep the whole herd undercover - there's shade and fans for the summer and dry space for the winter.

All the manure is pushed out of the shed by large scrapers in the floor - that's then collected and processed, and that's where the giant green Gaia Envirotech biodigester setup comes in.

Solid matter is removed, and that becomes fertiliser - it's spread on the paddocks which now grow feed for the cows or sold on for more profit - but the gas is broken down and cleaned by microbes.

That's a Ballarat innovation from mining equipment company Gekko, which is branching out into the energy from waste space.

The Trigg farm Gaia system, which is self-contained within a stack of bright green shipping containers, is a prototype the company is using to test out some new tech, including a generator.

Gekko's innovation and collaboration manager, Richard Goldberg, said it's a pretty simple system once the balance right.

"In layman's terms, you put the raw material into the system, there's the bugs in there that break it down into simpler parts, there's a few processes there, then another process called methogenesis, where other bugs make methane gas, that's what we capture off the top - that's effectively carbon dioxide and methane, or natural gas, and you burn that in a furnace for heat, or special generator for electricity," he said.

The Trigg system is calibrated for cow manure, but Mr Goldberg said research is underway for different feedstocks - Gekko is working with Food Innovation Australia Limited on ways to reduce wastage from food production lines, like cheese, and create a cheaper source of electricity for factories, based on research conducted in Ballarat.

"A lot of the existing systems for biodigestion need to be really big to be commercially viable - that's why it's a modular and low-cost design," he said.

"It allows people to put these systems locally and scale them to what they need, there's a lot of potential and versatility."

Mr Trigg said the generator, once fully hooked up, could power about 50 per cent of the cow shed and robotic dairy's electricity needs, which is promising.

"We're producing good gas and clean gas, the next step is producing power," he said.

"It's got to be profitable to be doing it, you don't want to be spending all day trying to generate power when you could be buying it."

"It feels good with energy prices soaring - anything we can do to reduce that cost is a benefit for our operation."

While the Triggs have been growing potatoes and dairy farming on the land for five generations, a lot of work was needed to optimise the process - this is why the cows are in the sheds, with fans and automated back scratchers, while the amount of manure produced is just enough to be viable for energy production.

"To have a system like this that allows us to have a digester, where a conventional dairy can't collect enough manure - we need the volume to go through," Mr Trigg said.

"You'd have to house your cows, otherwise you've got no way of collecting manure, (but) now cows are out of the paddocks so we can grow 3-400 tonne a week (of fodder), we can grow a hundred acres of maize for the cows, with silage, and the potatoes as well, there's a fair rotation happening now.

"There's probably other industries that could get more benefit out of it."

As well as self-sufficiency, Mr Goldberg said he was also proud of the system's green credentials.

"There's other income streams you can get - renewable energy credit you can get, and it's also eligible for carbon credits," he said.

"As a greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide's not good, but methane is more than 20 times worse.

"So even just flaring methane instead of releasing it out of the cow, even if you capture it the way we are and flare it, you improving greenhouse gases by 20 fold, you're reducing it."

Read more stories like this on Australian Dairyfarmer