Waikato team revolutionise milking

Automating milking seemed a futile goal when the Greenfield Team started work 10 years ago.

The team from DairyNZ are finalists in the agriculture section of Waikato’s Kudos awards for their work on systems that allow milking with minimal human involvement.

“It was such a foreign concept and there seemed to be so many hurdles. It just wasn’t a natural fit with the way we run farms inNew Zealand,” said team leader Dr Jenny Jago.

Their task was to integrate overseas technology, including European-designed milking robots, into the New Zealand way of farming.

“The conditions inNew Zealandare very different and there are different considerations,” said Jago.

Around 10,000 farms across 20 countries use automatic milking systems. New Zealand farms differ from international farms in that our cows graze outdoors and have to walk long distances to be milked.

The Greenfield team decided to use grass to motivate the cows to walk to the milking area by themselves. They are given access to three areas of grass on different parts of the farm. As they move from one area to another they pass through a selection system.

This system uses an identification tag on the cow’s leg to decide whether it gets milked or sent to the next paddock. The method allows cows to be milked throughout the day and night.

Traditionally herds are milked twice a day. More than half of all labour needed to run a small to medium sized dairy farm is for milking.

The Greenfield group’s methods are now being used on farms across the country. Jago believes the methods are helping farmers get the best from their systems.

[pullquote]One of the neat things about this project was that it required people with lots of different skills. It was never ever going to be achieved by a single skill set.

– Jenny Jago[/pullquote]

“The animals are moving and flowing around the farm under less pressure.”

A team of five has been nominated for the Kudos award but a broader group of people have been involved in the study over the years.

“One of the neat things about this project was that it required people with lots of different skills. It was never ever going to be achieved by a single skill set,” said Jago.

Contributors had expertise in everything from farm systems to electronics to animal behaviour.

Jago is pleased the group is getting acknowledged.

“It’s good recognition for a project that a lot of people committed a lot of energy and time and effort to and it was a worthy project that had big potential implications for the industry.”

• See the New Zealand approach to robots milking cows.