"The Lely Astronaut allows us to have a better quality of life physically and also probably mentally in a lot of ways."

The Williams family farm is run by Grant and Leesa, who together manage a 270 hectare dairy that milks 600 cows, with 10 Lely Astronauts, installed across 2 separate locations.  Their long-term partnership with Lely began in 2009 with the installation of three Lely Astronaut A3 robots on their dairy. Their first upgrade to four Lely Astronaut A4 milking robots took place in 2013 and was followed by transitioning from a rotary dairy to six Astronaut A5 robots on their home farm in 2021.

Grant and Leesa Williams chose to go down the route of robotic milking as it allowed them to keep their dairy as a family run business.

"Back in September 2021, we made the transition from our 40 unit rotary to the Lely Astronaut A5 robots. It was rather smooth cause we where down that path before." – Leesa Williams

"The features that we like about the AMS system is the relaxed voluntary nature of the whole milking system. You still gotta work as a farmer, you still doing those routine jobs whether fencing, or fertilizer. So those jobs are the same. The milking process is taking care of by the AMS units. But the cow flow is all voluntary. Cows are free to move on the farm wherever they like." – Grant Williams