Huddlestone Farm

Installing eight Lely A5 milking robots has enabled Keith Gue to help alleviate labour worries and cut staff costs whilst increasing yields and improving general cow health.

Prior to installing eight Lely A5 Astronaut milking robots in 2022, farm manager Keith Gue says that the farm had hit a plateau in performance, and he couldn’t see how they could increase yield with the current system without a major change.

The old parlour set up was labour intensive and in need of investment with the team of six and a half working nine to ten hour days, milking 450 cows, 2.5 times a day; twice a day for low yielders and three times a day for lower days in milk group. Aware that the 21 year old parlour would soon need upgrading, Keith says that robots felt like a sensible progression.

Labour

“It was getting more and more difficult to find staff to do the lower skilled jobs such as milking, and the robots remove that role” Keith says. “We invest a lot into the training of staff, foot trimming, AI, herd health, grassland management etc. If they’re just putting cups on cows for 8 hours of the day, they’re not utilising their skills and I’m not sure how we can help progress their careers if we were still milking in the parlour”.

Staff now spend more time doing high value jobs and less time doing low value jobs like cupping cows and scraping up” says Keith.

Since installing the robots, the team of six and a half is now a reduced team of four averaging eight hour days, this includes all foot trimming and AI. Keith says that as they don’t have as many early starts or late nights, the team make better decisions because they’re less tired so there’s less firefighting and more preventative work. The flip side of this is that the average quality of the team has gone up.

Keith believes that the introduction of the robotic system will extend the timeline of employment of his skilled and experienced employees who might otherwise have left earlier due to the physical demand of milking. Retaining these high value team members is of huge importance to Keith.

Being located in the South-East, it is a competitive market to attract staff and labour and accommodation costs are high. Keith says, “High house prices can increase take home packages by over 50% a year, meaning that the net cost of employing a person is getting very expensive.” Now that labour efficiencies have been improved it translates to big financial savings.

Three Lely Discovery 120 Collectors now keep the passageways clean and have removed the need for a full-time member of staff who on the old system would predominately have spent a day scraping out and moving cows amongst other jobs. Keith says that they work well with the robot milking system as they work around the cows, reduce the interruption to their day and facilitate more cow time.

Cow Health

Keith has been surprised at how well the cows adapted to the whole system change, attachment has been phenomenal with only one cow could not attach out of over 600 trained that wouldn’t attach, despite not having genetically selected for udders in over 12 years. Keith believes that cows are happier and healthier overall and fewer treatments are needed. The collars also help to pick up on any issues which may otherwise have been missed.

The shift to robots has facilitated a yield increase of 8-10% thanks to greater milking frequency and better cow health with visits now averaging 3.1 a day.

In the past, cows spent a long time each day standing in the collecting yard waiting to be milked. Since the robots have been in, cows no longer spend hours standing which has facilitated a huge hoof health and locomotion improvement. The Lely Discovery Collectors have also contributed to the reduction of Digital Dermatitis cases and passageways are kept cleaner than the scraper tractor had previously.

All in all, Keith is really pleased with the labour cost savings and health benefits which have come as a result of the system change. He has recently installed a further four more Lely A5 Astronauts on a contract farm which Huddlestone are managing.

Farm facts

• Huddlestone Farm, Steyning, West Sussex
• 1600 acres with 650 acres in Berwick-upon-Tweed
• Mixed dairy, sheep and arable enterprise
• Family owned business
• 450 Holstein herd milked through 8 Lely A5 Astronauts
• Milk sold to Tesco Arla
• 12 month average milk sold 38.5kg
• 12 month average CFP 2.95kg
• 1 average visits per day
• 14 cases of mastitis per 100 cows
• 29% Preg Rate
• Average SCC 150