Darren Gray
June 3, 2013
The Age
The farmhand on Lindsay Anderson’s dairy farm has enough stamina to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but these days is doing only about 16 hours a day. A dedicated worker, the farmhand has never asked for a smoko, back-chatted the boss, come to work with a hangover, or called in sick.
Mr Anderson’s latest hiring has in fact worked the past 18 months straight without either a holiday or a complaint. Not a single time-sheet has been filled out, and nor has a single weekly pay cheque been collected.
But Mr Anderson’s new farmhand did not come cheap. The total price tag exceeded $400,000 including installation. Mr Anderson’s new worker is a robot imported from the Netherlands, able to work on this West Gippsland dairy farm without encountering the bother of a 457 visa.
Lindsay Anderson says introducing the robotic system to his dairy farm near Drouin has kept him in the industry.
The robotic milker, an Insentec Astrea 20.20, is the only one in Australia, says Mr Anderson, who will soon travel to visit a dairy farmer near Toowoomba after he installs two more Astrea robotic systems.
When other manufacturers are included, Mr Anderson says there are only six Victorian dairy farms with robotic milking systems. But as farms strive to become more efficient, he predicts more will be installed.
Mr Anderson, who farms at Athlone about 20 kilometres south of Drouin, says the system is particularly suited to older farmers who want to reduce their physical workload, and farmers who want to cut labour costs and lift efficiencies.
The robot works quietly in the middle of the dairy shed with a cow milking box on either side. Once a cow is inside a robotic arm reaches underneath and identifies the location of her teats with a red laser beam and a camera. Each teat is then individually washed with clean warm water, blow-dried and stimulated in preparation for milking. Once a cup is fitted to a teat, the robot starts milking.
Each cow munches on an individually tailored ration of grain while being milked. The whole process takes about seven minutes and ends with a spray of disinfectant onto each teat. After jersey No.7678 is milked the computer screen above indicates she has just produced 8.1 litres of milk and chewed up 4.71 kilograms of grain.
Despite the large up-front cost, the 53-year-old dairy farmer believes going robotic was the right decision, and will deliver a more efficient, cheaper operation in the long run. ”It’s kept me in dairying, even with the fluctuations in prices. It’s put some other stresses on … But I’m happier in myself, if you talk to the family they’ll tell you I’m definitely a lot better and not under the stress I was before,” he says.
Mr Anderson says he got ill about seven years ago and had to reduce his workload, which meant relying more on paid staff.
”Because of those factors – illness and labour – we only had a couple of choices then. Either get out of the business, and the family’s been in this country milking jersey cows for well over 100 years, so that wasn’t necessarily an option. Put up with what was going on and hope everything would improve, or look at an alternative,” he says.
Mr Anderson believes his cows are a lot calmer and a lot happier. And he has seen nearly a sixfold drop in mastitis with the robot. He is looking to bring in more technology, such as virtual fencing, where locators and signal devices fitted to cows lure them in for milking. ”I won’t even need to go and get the cows if I can get that going,” he says.
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