Lely Center Mitchelstown

When I made the decision to change to robotic milking, some people said to me I must be mad because I’d be getting away from physically seeing the cows on the farm. But that hasn’t been the case at all. Thanks to the Astronaut A5, we’ve got access to more information about each animal now than we ever did previously, and that’s been very helpful to us both in terms of making milking easier and in monitoring the welfare of our herd,

I was critically ill in hospital for 16 days while we were at the height of calving at home so Pat, my farm manager and my wife Mary took over the show yet I could see how everything was going on the farm off my phone. When you bear in mind that Pat and I were pretty much illiterate on the technology front up until we had the robots installed, that just goes to show the quality and user friendliness of the Lely system. And we know that Lely Centre Mitchelstown is only ever a phone call away when it comes to any help or advice that we’d need.

The Discovery Collector is specifically designed for barns with solid floors and takes a revolutionary diverse approach when compared to traditional manure scrapers. The Collector does not push manure, but vacuums it. This makes the build-up of manure – in which cows stand – a thing of the past. This not only makes for a cleaner floor, it also ensures the cows’ hooves remain cleaner. This improves both cow health and the well-being of the animals.

Things are a lot more flexible now, with 5 young ones they need to be brought here, there and everywhere and now, it’s just so much easier.

After a trip to Holland in 2017, our eyes were really opened to the possibilities of robotic milking. The fact that it was working so successfully and then after we met two farmers with robots who were working off farm. After chatting with them, we could relate to how they were managing the farm and also working off the farm full time. We then went to an open day and visited a few farmers locally, and we saw that they definitely work on a grass based system.