Lely

Andre and Siv-Hege Janse - a Lely Farm - The Netherlands

Introduction:
Hello, we are Andre and Siv-Hege Janse. We are the proud parents of Dries-Peder (age 1) and Iselin (age 0). We live in De Heen, a small village in the municipality of Steenbergen, West Brabant.
In 1996 I moved from Rijswijk in the province of Zuid-Holland to West-Brabant. Siv-Hege has the Norwegian nationality. We met during a summer holiday on Crete and we have been together since 2004. We got married in 2006.

Our farm has 66 hectares of land (easily tillable silt loam) on which we grow potatoes, onions and Brussels sprouts, in addition to grass and maize for our dairy cattle. The dairy cattle comprises 125 milking cows and calves. Young stock is raised at a young stock breeding farm. The calves leave the farm at the age of approximately 75 days and they return one month before calving.

 Starting date of robotic milking:
Mid-June 2005 we started up the two A3 robots. At that time, we milked approximately 80 cows and within 3 years' time that number increased up to 120. 

Reasons for purchasing a milking robot:
The decision to go for robotic milking was made in 2004.

Ten years before, I had already seriously considered the robot option, but by then I did not have the courage. In 2004 I underwent knee surgery. For one week I was unable to milk the cows myself and I had to resort to a farm assistance service for the work at my farm. I knew that a few fellow dairy farmers were making serious preparations for automated milking during that week and I asked if I could join them during their visits to dairy farms with different automated milking systems. That was no problem.
A week after my knee surgery I was able to do the most important jobs at the farm myself.

After having gained experience - for 20 years - with traditional milking in a herringbone parlour, it was our wish to grow to an annual production of approximately 1,200 tons of milk in the Netherlands. In addition, we wanted more social freedom as well as lighter labour and therefore we made the switch to robotic milking.

Reasons for purchasing a Lely milking robot:
I had always been interested in milking technique. While still living in Zuid-Holland, I was a milking demonstrator for MAS Gouda. As a milking demonstrator I coached the pupils at the company who shortly afterwards were to visit the Oenkerk college to obtain their milking certificate. The task of the milking demonstrator was to prepare the pupils by teaching them the appropriate milking technique. At the behest of MAS Gouda I, together with a few other dairy farmers, took a special course in Oenkerk. That was absolutely great, because you visited many types of dairy farms with different kinds of milking systems. When I decided to go for robotic milking, I could make the most of the expertise and experience that I had gained during this period.

Before selecting a specific brand, you make a comparison between several manufacturers.

My most important criteria to opt for a Lely robot were:

- milking technique,
- milk quality;
- company vision in terms of automated milking and
- supplier's reliability and back-up.

 Were you family involved in the selection process of a milking robot?
Yes, the choice was discussed in detail with my wife (at that time my girl-friend) Siv Hege. The themes social freedom and flexibility were predominant in the discussions.

 How did the start-up process of the milking robot run off?
The starting process did not run off the way we would call standard these days ... Since at the time I was part of a testing group of dairy farmers for the Astronaut A3 (which was not yet available then), I went through quite a few ‘funny' failures. This is only logical with a product that is right in its development stage. Lely had prepared us for that and the company geared its servicing to those special circumstances by keeping a special team of engineers stand-by. Looking back, I can conclude that during this testing period there was one failure (in the night) that I could not solve myself. The nature of all other incidents was such that I could solve them myself (with or without telephone support from the engineer) or that I could wait till the next morning.

Other Lely equipment on your farm:
Discovery (2005), Luna (2005), Calm (2006), Lely Light (2007) and HDR+Orbiter (2008)

Strong points of your dairy farm:
High labour productivity in combination with effective utilisation of the available means of production.

Targets of your dairy farm:
Effective utilisation of available means of production with the least possible labour.

Annual milk production: 1,200 tons

Milk production per robot/day: 1,630 kg

Average number of cows in lactation: 110

Average 305 days/cow production: 9900

Number of milkings per cow/per day: 2,8

Number of refusals per cow/per day: 2,5 

Number of cows to be collected per day: 10

 Number of cows to be collected per robot/per round: 4

 Milk quality over the past month:

-          Protein contents: 3,40
-          Fat contents: 4,10
-          Bacterial count (x 1,000/ml): 4
-          SCC (x 1,000/ml): 170
-          Urea (mg/dl): 19

 Advice / tips for your colleagues:
Convenient robot milking is: approaching your optimum. This optimum is different in all situations, depending on the dairy farmer, his starting points, targets and his readiness to adopt a different way of thinking.