Tom & Stephanie Stack

Just outside the town of Mallow, Tom and Stephanie Stack decided to automate their milking with a Lely Astronaut in 2019 they started with 73 cows on a single robot, and it was going so well that when extra land became available it was an easy decision to add a second Astronaut milking robot in 2021. Currently, they are milking 140 cows on 2 Lely Astronauts producing 580kg of milk solids /cow. This achievement is more impressive by both Tom and Stephanie working off farm. 

“We calve around 110 cows in the spring and a further 40 in the autumn, we cull any non-performing cows using the information we get from the Lely system” Tom adds that the split calving helps them spread the workload. ”The autumn calvers are no real extra work they calve out in the paddock and the robot is waiting there to milk them so really it is just looking after the calves is extra, also it gives great cashflow into the business during December and January with minimal effort - the cows still need to be fed and cubicles bedded. All the spring calvers get 60 days dry so we get every drop of milk in the tank ”