Milking longer with maize silage
This season's dry conditions have made one thing clear: not having enough feed on hand can bring your season to an early close.
Waikato Milking Systems’ latest innovation, ErgoPOD is now commercially available within New Zealand and Australia.
This state-of-the-art semi-robotic milking technology promises to increase milking speed, productivity, and efficiency in the milking parlour, the company says.
Designed to break productivity barriers, Ergo- POD is said to focus on ten key drivers developed to optimise the milking process and enhance overall productivity.
“ErgoPOD redefines milking precision with its advanced quarter-milking technology, enabling early detection of health concerns for faster, targeted intervention at the individual animal level.
“Engineered with hygiene and milk quality as core priorities, ErgoPOD uses individual per quarter milk lines rather than the traditional milking cluster. This eliminates cross-contamination between quarters and allows for precise milk sampling from within each quarter to identify potential infections,” WMS says.
Additionally, the DairyHQ Parlour Management System enhances this process by delivering real-time production data and live updates on cow health and system performance, empowering farmers to make informed decisions with confidence.
ErgoPOD is engineered to reduce energy and water usage, promoting greater environmental stewardship. Its seamless integration into both new and existing rotary dairy installations ensures operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
“With ErgoPOD, our vision was a future where efficiency, safety, and animal well-being converge seamlessly,” says Jamie Mikkelson, executive chairman, Waikato Milking Systems.
“Our mission was to provide dairy farmers with the technology to achieve unprecedented productivity and efficiency to milk more cows, while prioritising the health and safety of both operators and cows.
“For dairy farmers driven to enhance milking time productivity and efficiency, with an improved return on investment, ErgoPOD is the ultimate solution,” says Mikkelson.
Among the regular exhibitors at last month’s South Island Agricultural Field Days, the one that arguably takes the most intensive preparation every time is the PGG Wrightson Seeds site.
Two high producing Canterbury dairy farmers are moving to blended stockfeed supplements fed in-shed for a number of reasons, not the least of which is to boost protein levels, which they can’t achieve through pasture under the region’s nitrogen limit of 190kg/ha.
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