Lely Center Gippsland

With the installation of robots, it's enabled us to milk nearly double the amount of cows with the same amount of staff... Initally we put in four Lely A5 robots and within two months we'd gone ahead and put in two more, because the system was just so easy and having the additional cows doesn't really create that much more extra work.

Pre-robots, our life was really tied to being here all the time. We didn’t have days off. And I was only seeing the kids in the evening. You’re tired and you’re not putting the time into family that you should be. Whereas now I can have breakfast with the kids before they get on the bus if I want to. I probably get an hour’s more sleep every day now. Which over a week is pretty much another day’s sleep!

It’s a great lifestyle. It’s still farming, you’re just not having to put cups on cows while they’re kicking and you’re stretching to reach their udders. We want to keep farming, we love it. But we didn’t want to be doing the physical slog of putting cups on for another 20 years.

It’s a lot easier on the legs. I was getting really sore legs, sore feet, from milking for so many years. I’m not milking anymore, I’m just doing other things around the farm… I wasn't keen on milking cows for another 10 or 15 years. If i didn't put the robots in, I would have probably got out of dairy and just gone into beef. So it's definitely kept me in dairy for a number of years more.

Everybody in the dairy industry is saying they’re finding it hard to get milkers. Whereas doing it this way, it’s much better for the cows and its better for the workers. Like I’ve been milking cows all my life and I’m not getting sick of milking the cows, it’s just the grind of having to do it twice a day, every day, and this just gives you an out. You can get there when you want to in the morning, you can make sure everything’s done in the afternoon and then you can go home.