Today was my last day of farm visits with my hosts at DeLaval. Orsono is the head office for DeLaval in Chile, as well as Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru and it has been a pleasure to meet and work with Felipe Aceituno, the Sales Director, and his staff while I am here. The program today included a Tropilla dairy, a commercial pasture based dairy that recently started 4 DeLaval VMS 300 milking robots. This farm has a goal of achieving higher production per cow with a combination of excellent quality pasture and higher levels of supplementary feeding in the robots than what has been customary on pasture dairies. Currently there are 145 cows with 43 more calving in February and a plan to milk 270 cows total. It will be interesting to see what they have learned when we come back with a PDO tour a year from now. We also visit Cooprinsem. Started as a farmer owned semen distributor it is now the largest agricultural supply cooperative in Chile. This coop enjoys a market share of roughly 40% in semen, veterinary drugs, and milking equipment and is also a major supplier of prepared feeds and supplements. They also operate the milk testing laboratory which provides milk recording for 160,000 cows and also does payment testing for processors. I toured their milk recording and feed testing laboratories as well as a local retail outlet.  

Here in Chile, DeLaval has put a great effort into educating producers about cow comfort. They are participating in heat stress research, and have staff specifically dedicated to helping clients address cow comfort issues. They have been excellent hosts, so it was a pleasure for me to give something back today by leading a 2 hour CowSignals seminar to give them insight into the cow behaviour signs we use a cues to cow comfort.

Just so you don’t think all the milking equipment here is blue, I did meet the local Lely dealer and make a brief visit to a dairy with a herd of red cows and 3 red robots. This farm also used 3 way grazing in a layout very similar to the research station.

Tomorrow will be my “tourist day” so get ready for some awesome shots of the Orsono  Volcano, a dominant feature of the skyline in this region.  

When new pasture is offered it gets busy in the robot area on this pasture based dairy with 4 robots.

Cows heading to new pasture through a smart selection gate after milking