CHESTERVILLE – Every wonderful technology has its flipside, and robotic milking, as it turns out, is no exception.
Jack Rodenburg, a dairy specialist at the Ontario Ministry of Food and Agriculture, admits a very small minority of robot-owning farmers in Ontario have found the transition difficult to the point that they have given up their machines. "For sure, we have probably taken out three Lely systems," Rodenburg told The AgriNews.
He added that another robot maker, AMS Liberty, recently removed the only two units it had installed in Ontario, as the company is in the midst of refinancing. "They have stepped back from the market."
Still, the removals represent but a small slice of the pie. Industry-leading Lely has approximately 40 robots operating in Canada today.
And according to DeLaval sales director Patrick Lecavalier, his company’s slower foray into the Canadian marketplace is building up steam, with 26 units sold, although that number includes machines that haven’t been installed yet. Also included in the DeLaval figure is the company’s first robot in Eastern Ontario, which is scheduled to go in at Kelley Allen’s farm in Alfred in mid-August.
Rodenburg says some farmers may have the wrong idea about robotic milkers.
"If the impression is that this will eliminate time in the barn, that’s wrong."
While the farmer won’t be milking anymore, the robot will boost the amount of time a farmer spends on management, he says.
Lecavalier agrees that robotic technology is not for everyone. "That’s absolutely for sure," he says, adding that DeLaval has taken steps to ensure that its robots aren’t sold into the wrong hands, including refusal of sale.
"We’ve never turned down sales before, but we have now." So far, DeLaval hasn’t experienced any robot removals in Canada.
"When someone rips a robot out, it’s bad for the company but also bad for the whole market."
Lecavalier says his company has concluded that 70 percent of those farmers who scrap robots made the purchase "for the wrong reasons."
Philippe Delabays of Finch is one dairy farmer to have turned his back on the robotic revolution.
The AgriNews reported on the February 2001 open house at Delabays’ farm, two months after he had made the bold switch from a conventional tie-stall operation and placed his 50 milking cows into a new free-stall barn whose centrepiece was a brand new Lely Astronaut robot.
Delabays was one of the first in Eastern Ontario to make the leap.
Today, he is back to milking his cows in the old tie-stall barn, after using the robot for less than a year. He says he removed the machine last October and sold it to somebody in Russell.
"It was very disappointing," he told The AgriNews recently.
He hopes to install a milking parlour in the new barn this summer. Until then, the free-stall structure simply houses his population of dry cows and heifers.
Among other issues, Delabays claims he became increasingly frustrated last year with the robot’s apparent inability to milk some of his cows and difficulties in training the animals to enter the machine on their own.
Because a robotic milker works round the clock and is connected to a beeper to alert the farmer of any problems, those problems, when they occur, can be aggravating.
Back as a conventional farmer, he says he appreciates knowing when his chores are done for the evening — and no beeper demanding late-night trips to the barn.
He says the experience has turned him off robotic milkers in general. In his opinion, farmers who are looking at buying a robot should make sure their cows are accustomed to a free-stall environment before the robot is installed. Immediately taking the animals from a tie-stall to a free-stall environment, as he did, will make the transition more difficult. "That’s my first advice."
Secondly, he says the prospective buyer should spend much more than a couple of hours checking out somebody else’s operation.
"Stay a couple of days. This way, you will see the flaws, as much as the good.
"Looking back, I realize that two or three hours was not enough."