Matt Radford and his brother Andrew bought their first farm around 17 years ago. After five years of milking there, they moved on to buy their parents farm which is where they are currently milking now with six Lely Astronaut A3 Milking Robots. Olivia Milhouse is the herd manager of the farm and also runs the calf shed, where two Lely Calm Feeders are situated.
Matt explained to us how the two, twenty double up herringbones were getting old and that a change was needed to continue dairy farming. While exploring their options, Matthew noticed something suprising when comparing the costs of a traditional versus a robotic dairy.
"the cost [of getting into robotics] was pretty similar to going into another herringbone... we sort of had a look at it over the last couple years and the cost wasn't much different." Further weighing up factors like labour and flexibility in their work, the Radford brothers decided to go down the route of robotics instead of a new herringbone.
Matt explained to us how with his existing dairy setup, he was concerned about whether the limited space was suitable for robotics.
"Couple of the robot farms we'd seen had feed pads in the actual shed with the robots... We didn't heaps of space so we wanted to jam as much into shed as we could, so we just put a feed pad in cause we didnt have the room to put one on the outside."
Partners of the Radford family
Lely Center Tasmania, also known as Dairy Maintenance & Installation, has branches in Smithton and Launceston. They spend every day making farmer's lives easier with innovative solutions and tailored services. Craig and Sheree Stokes established DMI in 2005 at their home in Smithton. The family company has grown over time with Craig training up many technicians and teaching them the knowledge he has gained from his years in the dairy industry. He began working in the dairy industry back in 1988 and is still very passionate about the industry to this day.
