Robotics (AMS) – Our Land of Milk and Honey

07.03.18

Do robots dream of electric cows?

Three years ago this week, on 4 March 2015, our oldest cow walked into stall number one to be milked by a robot. Five days before, she had also brazenly led the charge into the new shed with some fledglings behind her. This ‘dry run’ was to make the cows familiar with their new space by making it smell like them. For 95 years our family milked cows manually. Milking time would vary, depending on the number of cows. In […]

Farm, Robotics (AMS)

The Good Farmer: in defence of (non-industrial) dairying

25.05.17

The Good Farmer: in defence of (non-industrial) dairying

Published in The Spinoff on April 24, 2017. Earlier this month, the current affairs show Sunday aired a segment called The Price of Milk. It outraged a lot of people, especially in the farming community, and for days after the show’s Facebook page was swarming. If you didn’t catch it, a lot of the shock was around the treatment of animals and the environment – building on the last few years of negative sentiment. It felt like a jolt. My family […]

Apiary, Dairy, Economic Sustainability, Environmental Sustainability, Farm, History, Organic, Pasture, Robotics (AMS), Social Sustainability

Twitter @__olmh

The Good Farmer: in defence of (non-industrial) dairying.

Twitter @__olmh

“Robotic milking technology allows for a better trained and more flexible workforce.”

30.06.16

Music to milk to

Rather than favour the flavour of the day, our cows have grown up on rock music: Led Zeppelin, the Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Nirvana, The White Stripes. While this has been great for cultivating their musical taste, it dawned on us it probably hasn’t been great for cultivating their calmness, or their milk production. We built an automated milking shed (AMS) last year to create a milking environment that was more comfortable for the cows. They come in when they feel […]

Farm, Robotics (AMS)