The aim of Dion van Leeuwen and Meg Coombs’ farm is to breed a moderately-sized cow that has a high yield of milk solids, 650kg from a heifer and 800kg from a cow, and is lactating for 305 days.
The New Zealand farmers are working hard to drive productivity in their indoor robotic milking system, using 24 Lely Astronaut A4s.
The milk cows through a conventional rotary parlour also, but Dion believes that the Lely system is superior. “The Lely Astronaut milking robot allows us to track the cow performance and we can use this data to look at any health issues or any breeding techniques we want to put over these cows.
“We can monitor their performance day-to-day really easily.”
Image and video source: Lely YouTube
