Combining eye for climate with animal welfare

An old saying - accentuating the importance of customers – goes: the customer is king. So, what other option is there on the birthday of Dutch King H.M. Willem-Alexander than to share one of our farmer’s stories? Since 1992, our colleagues of Lely Benelux have been doing business with the family-owned Van den Berg farm in Dutch Bleskensgraaf. Today, the farm owns 110 milking cows – and an impressive range of Lely robots, supporting the farmer in milking and feeding. 

Ad and Greta van den Berg have a strong link with Lely, and not just because of their impressive Lely installed base. Not only is Ad the brother of former Director of Lely Technologies Karel van den Berg, the Bleskensgraaf-based farm is also the place where the development of the first Astronaut milking robot took place. Ad and Greta were real innovators when they started using the world’s first Astronaut. A true life changer: “Our day now starts around 7 a.m., where we first had to get up at 5 a.m. to milk all our cows by hand”, Ad recalls. 

Lely’s innovative solutions have supported the Van den Berg family in their beautiful profession, combining an eye for climate with animal welfare. “We are sure innovation will support us in achieving our future ambitions by creating an environmentally friendly and climate neutral environment while at the same time maintaining– and maybe even improving – our high level of animal welfare”, Ad concludes.  

Listen to dairy farming

The Dairy Experience Podcast

The challenges and satisfactions of dairy farming in Australasia are unique in comparison to the rest of the world. To showoff how one-of-a-kind our farmers and dairy-regions are, we have decided to kickoff an exciting initiative, a podcast we call: The Dairy Experience

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