I guess my complete failure as a blogger is now painfully evident since I am long returned from Chile and have not told you anything beyond my first day on the ground. Several “barbs” from readers wondering what happened have prompted me to finish the task and share my story even if it is a month late. So bear with me and perhaps we can pretend it is Tuesday January 7^th . . .my second day on the ground in Chile. This morning started with an 80 minute flight heading south from Santiago to a regional airport in Temuco. I was greeted there by Bastian Mira, the VMS Solutions Manager for DeLaval in South America and together we headed north to the town of Los Angeles, which is about 500 km south of Santiago.  Bastian is enthusiastic and knows the VMS technology inside out so the drive proved very educational for me and gave us a great opportunity to compare notes on robotic milking in general.

The farm visit we made today was unquestionably the highlight of my trip and it was absolutely amazing. I already knew much of the Ancali Dairy story from industry meetings and the internet, but to see it first hand was very special. Six years ago, this dairy milked 6000 cows with three 50 stall internal rotary parlors. That year they built a new barn and equipped it with 8 DeLaval VMS. They got substantially more milk with less labour from the robot cows and built a second 8 robot barn the following year. In 2016 they announced plans for a complete conversion to robots and today the parlors are shut down and there are 66 robots milking and 6 more being installed. Back when I first learned of the plans to retrofit all the existing barns with robots, I was concerned that new barns designed for robots and a small group of robot cows selected from a large herd generally turns into a success story, while a mass conversion of barns with less than ideal layouts is much more challenging.  The results I saw today leave no doubt that this is a success story. Today there are 4100 cows milking on the 66 robots, producing 45.3 Kg milk per cow on 2.74 milkings. One of the great benefits of computerized on farm records is that reliable numbers are right there in front of you and the records available in a herd this size are mind boggling. As shown int the picture above, the Delpro software in the central office can display performance data on all 66 individual robots or provide analysis on any combination of cows or groups you wish to choose. All groups are milk first guided traffic, but with different variations in different barns. Overall performance seemed to be remarkably consistent regardless of the layout or group sizes of 1, 2 or 3 robots. The very long retrofit sand bedded barns had robots clustered at each end with manure scraped and flushed to the center. The robots were managed in clusters of 12 to 16 based on their location close together. Each robot cluster had a daytime team of three employees cleaning stalls and robot rooms, fetching cows and performing most treatment and handling functions. Breeding is done by a crew that circles the farm and feeding, bedding delivery etc are done by other staff. The afternoon and night shift is one person per cluster maintaining stalls and supervising milking. Most groups had a sort pen but it was rarely used. The cluster team sorts the cows they need for breeding, dry off, treatment etc. directly from the group. There is a protocol in place to ensure no cow spends too long in the commitment pen. Fresh cows were milked for two days in the double 10 herringbone located beside the maternity and treatment barn and then moved to one of two robots where cows were milked three times a day at fixed intervals. These cows were in 3 subgroups in the pen that were each given 160 minutes of robot access every 8 hours and directed through by the staff. No doubt making sure fresh cows get in the habit of 3 times milking is a good management practice but they certainly have taken that to the extreme here. In addition to the wow factor of seeing this kind of milk production the quality of cows here in Chile continues to impress and in this herd the emphasis on cow comfort with sand bedding, and good heat stress management with lots of fans is also noteworthy. The management of this dairy feels that they have achieved a 15% increase in production per cow and a 40% decrease in labour per cow with the change to robots. While it is impossible to isolate the reasons for more milk, the suggest lower stress with no trips to the parlors makes for better production directly but also higher feed intake, and better health and fertility. More milk from fewer cows also allows for harder culling, but no matter the reason, management is clearly happy with the results.