A collective 9,000 milking cows on four different locations in New York and Ohio, the Oakfield Corners Dairy finds respite in their robotic rotary milking parlor. Jonathan and Alicia Lamb of Oakfield Corners installed the GEA DairyProQ to milk 1,800 cows. Any dairy farmer knows the frustration in finding and keeping good help. For the Lambs, technology was the answer.
“We’re trading off higher equipment and upkeep costs for a lot less labor,” Jonathan explains.
According to Larry Tranel with Iowa State University Extension, robotic systems decrease milking labor hours by 75%, saving the farmer roughly $44,000 per year.
GEA’s automated milking process can be managed by one person alone, minimizing labor costs and maximizing efficiency.
After considering whether to proceed with the DairyProQ or box robots, the Lambs chose the DariyProQ for factors such as bedding layout and ease-of-use.
Fifteen months after finalizing the plans, the Lamb’s pushed their first group through the robotic rotary.
“From the outset, the robots performed really well,” Jonathan says. “Right from the beginning, the units immediately attached to the cows — of all different conformations — which is pretty impressive.”
GEA’s DairyNet, part of the 365FarmNet software is the heartbeat of the robotic rotary.
Adapting to Change
Transitioning from milking in a herringbone parlor for 40-plus years to a robotic rotary required mounds of patience from both the Lamb family and their Holsteins.
After nearly eight months with the DairyProQ, Jonathan says their farm is beginning to understand the robotic milking ropes. However, he says, “getting the older and late-lactation cows to learn the new setup resulted in a lot of balking.”
The Lamb family says producers should plan on an adjustment period of roughly three or four months with many tweaks along the way before the operator, robots and livestock are on the same page.
Trade-Offs
Purchasing a piece of technology such as the DairyProQ comes with pros and cons. Jonathan says you can keep a longer list of pros when you keep up with maintenance.
“There’s a lot of self-diagnoses in the robots, but how well the robots perform is dictated by how well they’re maintained,” Jonathan says. “Somebody still has to intervene even if the robot is struggling or something is out of alignment.”
Lamb farms has two employees who are trained to diagnose and maintain the robots. However, GEA does offer extensive training, on-call assistance and over-the-phone diagnosis.
Valuable Assets
As a satellite facility for Boviteq and Trans Ova Genetics, with a large-scale embryo transfer (ET) and in vitro fertilization (IVF) program, the Lamb family sees large investments, like the DairyProQ, as the right choice for their operation.
Lamb farms uses both Trans Ova and Bovitech services for IVF with their cattle, and Alicia says, “flushing twice a week, sometimes three times a week, on the home farm.”
With so many moving parts on their Oakfield, N.Y. farm, the couple seeks efficiency in all tasks.
“Trans Ova or Boviteq veterinarians retrieve the oocytes, and then the oocytes are sent back to their respective organizations for fertilization,” Alicia says. “Once fertilized, they are shipped back to us, and our team are implanting all those embryos here on the farm.”
Hold Steady
With a focus on both farm and family, Jonathan and Alicia intend to maintain their herd size and continue to increase productivity through the technology currently available to them.
“The robotic rotary project we are finishing now has been a large project for us, so we need to kind of hit the pause button and make sure that we’re doing everything as well as we can before anything else.”
