Agriculture

Dairy farmer Matthew Gosden (left) and Adrian Moore of T H White inspect the newly installed DeLaval Voluntary Milking System.
Voluntary milking comes of age
T H White's first installation of the new DeLaval Voluntary Milking System is already transforming milk production at a Jersey herd near Basingstoke...
system. Most robotic milking systems can only handle 60 cows a day, but the DeLaval VMS will handle up to 75 which is the number we normally have milking. Those 15 extra cows equate to about 105,000 litres of milk a year, or around £27,000 more revenue.”

Besides milk and cream production, the Gosdens have established a quality ice cream business, an ideal end-product for the rich milk produced by their Jersey herd and much loved by several celebrity chefs. That is the first stage in an exciting expansion programme, which next year will include yoghurt, with other products to follow. That in turn is likely to mean an expansion of the herd and it is possible that the Gosdens will instal a second DeLaval VMS in 18-24 months.

“The great thing is that this system works round the clock, so the cows are milked when they want to be,” said Matthew. “What’s more, I get to see a lot more of my bed! Of course, it’s important to know if there is a problem and the system will actually phone me if it encounters something it can’t resolve itself.

“Now we rely on the VMS, service is crucial and T H White delivers the back-up we need, with three trained engineers on hand 24/7 and can integrate my system online without the need to travel to my farm should there be a problem. It’s brilliant!”

If you would like to find out more about the DeLaval Voluntary Milking System and how it could transform your business, call Adrian Moore on 01373 465941.
Matthew Gosden, the third generation to join his family’s dairy farming business, is certainly impressed: “Although our system has only been in operation for a month the cows have adapted to it very well and we are already seeing a big change in production,” he said. “We had felt for some time that robotic milking was the way for us to go, partly because of the difficulties we had been experiencing in recruiting labour for milking. We were actually on the point of purchasing. They arranged for us to see the system in operation in Holland last September – we were astounded by what we saw and we knew we had to order one!”

"The DeLaval VMS represents a significant investment for us,” Matthew Gosden added, “but its efficiency will end up paying for the
In 1988 T H White Managing Director David Scott wrote a letter to the Managing Director of Alfa Laval Agri (now DeLaval) to point out the importance of robotic milking in the future of the dairy farming industry.

Twenty one years later, on 22 January 2009, at Gosden’s Jersey Herd, Sherfield-on-Loddon near Basingstoke, that vision became reality with the completion of T H White’s first installation of the DeLaval Voluntary Milking System (VMS).

Over the intervening years there have been worthy efforts at developing robotic milking systems, but none have offered the sophistication and reliability of today’s DeLaval VMS.

In essence, VMS exploits a cow’s natural behaviour cycle of feeding, resting and ruminating, and is built around the fact that each cow decides when she wants to feed and this coincides with the cow's milking intervals (FeedFirst™). It quite literally has the potential to revolutionise milking practice, increasing yields, freeing-up a lot of time for the farmer and enabling better herd management.