Our farm operated with a 10 a side, double up herringbone dairy for many years.  However, in the late 1980's it was evident that this was not going to see us into the future.  The age of the structure and its capacity of cows was limited (in fact, we got to 300 cows in this shed which was well past capacity).  In addition, the time required to milk the cows was creeping up (around 7 hours just to milk) and most of the work in the shed was done manually.

In 1992, work commenced on building a brand new 44 bale rotary dairy with automatic plant washing, situated alongside the existing dairy.  This meant that some of the old infrastructure could be utilised within the new complex.  A rotary was chosen as the best option for labour and cow flow, although it should be noted that this was in the very early days of rotaries being installed, and as such, we hosted a large number of farmer groups to see the setup in action.  By 1993, the new dairy was complete, with most of the work being done by ourselves.

Not long after the rotary was completed, we decided to install Westfalia's automatic identification and computer system to assist us in the monitoring and management of the cows.  The cows were all fitted with collars that had a transponder, allowing us to monitor and record activity of individual cows twice a day.  This information is fed to the computer system via a receiver that identifies the cow when she walks on the platform.
 

The computer system, (Westfalia's "Dairy Plan"), also allows us to automatically feed, weigh and draft individual cows as they walk on or off the platform.  The system also enables us to undertake heat detection based on activity, record all animal vet action from birth to death (or leaving farm), and enables us to record a variety of information about each animal (such as whether she is registered, her classification, the bulls that match her for AI, etc..).  Any number of reports can also be generated.

In 2006, we installed automatic cup removers and milk meters, which measure total milk flow and conductivity per cow.  We also upgraded the activity monitoring to record every 2 hours (rather than only twice a day).  This meant a huge overhaul both physically (changing every collar on each of the 400+ cows, inbetween an AM and PM milking!) and technologically (the computer system upgrade).

We are a test farm for many of Westfalia's products.  We have tested the automatic weigh scales and drafting system before they were released commercially, we have received the first computerised drive for the automatic plant washing system (they were a manual switch previously), we have tested a variety of aerials for the system, and we continue to test the various upgrades of the Dairy Plan programme.

Outside of the dairy shed, Mark has adopted the use of the Tru Test "Pasture Master II" pasture probe to more accurately allocate pasture for grazing, to better manage pastures and pasture residue.  This probe measure the dry matter of pastures in the paddock.

We are proud to be considered amongst the early adopters of technology in the dairy industry, although technology is moving at such a fast pace these days, we sometimes feel we are being left behind!  However, we continue to install and improve technology on farm on a regular basis.