Mention the word robot to most people and even today what usually comes instantly to mind is an image straight out of science fiction, but not to father and son team, Richard and Matthew Roberts, for whom it is far from being a fantasy. Indeed, it is a serious business and they have made a substantial investment in robot-operated dairy production.
The journey to make the future a reality today has not been an easy one, especially as circumstances in the past conspired against Richard’s progress in the farming industry, notably the Foot and Mouth outbreak in 2001 in which he lost all his animals in the enforced cull on Anglesey.
Cefn Maesoglan Farm is situated on 260 acres in the southwest corner of the island between Brynsiencyn and Llangaffo. It was purchased by Richard’s great great grandfather in the 1870s and later passed onto him by his grandmother. It has remained in the family’s ownership ever since but not without problems and heartache.
“I farmed it from 1984 to 2001 when we were culled as part of the contiguous Anglesey Foot and Mouth Disease scheme, at which point I let the farm on a rolling five-year Farm Business Tenancy,” Richard said. “Then I was lucky enough to get employment with Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group Cymru as the north Wales adviser.”
A few years later, Richard started to ponder the future and as with many things in life an opportunity arose to help shape the way things would be. His son Matthew was very keen to farm and when he graduated from Harper Adams and had gained some dairy experience, they went in to partnership together and started farming together under the trading name of RT & M Roberts from October 2012.
“We were lucky to have had the farm let to such a good tenant so it came back in excellent heart,” commented Richard. “That made our start up much easier.”
Matthew, aged 24, is now married to Charlotte whom he met while they were students at Harper Adams. They have a baby son Thomas, born September 2013.
Richard said, “We currently run a herd of 133 pedigree Jerseys imported from Denmark and are looking to push this to 160 in early 2014. We are establishing a pedigree herd under the title of Menai Jerseys. All our cows are heifers and are in their first lactation and are averaging 24 litres per cow per day with 5.6%+ butterfat and 3.4% proteins but the milksolids are rising on a monthly basis as the heifers settle into their lactation and we expect to be rising 10% solids by the end of October. We supply Glanbia, Llangefni where it is used for making mozzarella cheese.
“Apart from the cows, we grow 75 acres of cereals both for wholecrop silage and grain and straw. We cut at least three crops of grass silage and could make a fourth but have sufficient stock this year.”
A big investment in robots and associated specialised building works is not for the faint hearted. As Richard’s bank manager, Dewi Davies, can attest, it takes a lot of detailed planning and it is not every day that he is approached for funding in robots. “Richard came to us with what was no doubt a very serious business plan put together with Kite Consulting aided by Farming Connect – there was nothing made up about it. He had clearly spent a couple of years researching it really well and in depth and detail. His son Matthew had also spent a month with robot manufacturer Lely. All in all, a business plan like this one is always much easier to support.”
Richard said, “I knew we had to spend some time first getting it right, starting our research from 2010 onwards. One of the key things was to approach a lot of milk buyers to ascertain what they wanted and once we knew that, other things fell in to place. We went to Denmark and the Netherlands as well as plenty of robot farms here in the UK to learn and to get ideas. We saw units on which we based ours where the cows have plenty of socialising space and never get separated and are not stressed.”
The cows are milked via two Lely Astronaut A4 robots. There is also a Lely Discovery robotic manure scraper and a Lely Juno robotic silage pusher. All the cows at Cefn Maesoglan are housed under one roof in a building that, in addition to the milking robots, has some highly specialised purpose-designed features, including an underground slurry lagoon, steep pitched roof and a simulated sunlight lighting system which influences both fertility and milk yield.
Richard said, “Robots give you back your life – they take out the mundane. Even when you are asleep at night you are milking. Automation is doing it for you around the clock. For example, the silage at the feed face is pushed up every two hours day & night, and by automating this, we have seen cow intakes rise which has put one to two litres of milk extra per cow per day into the tank. However, you have to be comfortable with computers and are highly reliant on uninterrupted electricity supply so we have to have a generator to get everything back up and running in a couple of minutes if there is a power cut. If at any time we decided to stop milking, the robots are portable and easily re-sellable.”
Richard’s wife of 29 years Katharine said, “The two Lely A4 robots have screen monitors where you can see exactly the pace at which the cows are feeding and milking and how much and how fast they are producing. It also gives you control over what’s happening. The milk is automatically pumped and piped through to a cooler and tank where it is stored until it is collected and transported to the Glanbia processing plant by tanker lorry.”
Richard and Matthew had decided at the beginning that there was an immediate future in dairy and for the long term. Richard said, “We have built the unit with the view for expansion. Ours is a new venture, so we have to understand it and concentrate on the dairy side but there is scope to go into beef in the future. In time, our aim is a third robot.”
And that aim, apart from helping to satisfy a lot of lovers of mozzarella-topped pizza throughout the land, will help Richard and his family to provide a secure future for themselves, thanks to the Menai Jerseys and some clever robots.
