New automated parallel parlor teat spray wand system starts up in California
The first automated teat spray wand for parallel parlors was on display recently in California. New Zealand-based Onfarm Solutions hosted an open house at Bar-Mac Dairy in Gustine, California, to show off a new, recently installed rail-and-wand teat spray system. The company offers an automated stationary teat spray wand for use in rotary parlors and a walk-over automated teat sprayer for use in rotaries and other parlor types. But the automated system for parallel parlors on display last week was the first-of-its-kind.
Outside of being installed on a test farm in New Zealand, the new California installation is only the second installation of such technology in the world.
The installation of the new technology has been years in-waiting.
Just before the COVID-19 pandemic began, Onfarm Solutions was readying to install technology on Bar-Mac Dairy that it had been developing for several years. Then pandemic-related shutdowns in New Zealand, which were among the strictest in the world, prevented the company’s technicians from coming to the U.S. to install and test the newly developed technology.
The company installed its new equipment earlier this summer at Bar-Mac when technicians were permitted to leave New Zealand. The system has been operating on-farm for several weeks now. The farm will continue to operate the equipment for at least six months. Technicians will monitor the software during that time period to tweak the equipment’s performance and further dial in its accuracy.
“I’m really pleased with what I saw today. It was really exciting,” said Onfarm Solutions’ CEO Gary Arnott, who witnessed multiple teat spray arms in action for the first time. Arnott had already seen the system in action at the company’s test farm in New Zealand, but that farm only had one arm in action.
The newest system is installed on a double-30 GEA parallel parlor milking 2,100 cows twice daily. The four teat preparation arms of the system are capable of spraying teat dip for both pre-milking and post-milking. They move up and down the parlor deck via an overhead gantry system.
The arms begin engaging five seconds after sensing the first cow has loaded and is standing in place for milking. Observing the equipment in action, one can see a red dot projected onto the leg of the cow. It looks much like a laser pointer. This is part of the sensors that the system uses to gauge the position of the cow. It works down the line at about 4 to 5 seconds per stall, projecting its teat spray wand through the legs of the cows and spraying a burst of pre-dip onto the udder. Each arm is responsible for spraying 15 stalls in the parlor.
The arm sits at rest when it completes its row of 15 cows.
When the automatic take-offs in the system signal that a cow is done milking, the arm moves to that location after claw removal and sprays post-dip. As units come off, the arms move to that location and spray each cow.
See the system in action below. The first video is of a pre-spray routine (courtesy of Onfarm Solutions). The second video is of a post-spray routine (from a video I captured).
Farm owners are hoping the new technology can further aid employees in cow health and parlor efficiency.
“The faster we can get the cows in and out of the barn, the better for the overall health of the cows,” says Brad Nightengale, manager at Bar-Mac Dairy.
The biggest potential benefit of the system is the prospect of being able to milk more cows with the same parlor and same number of workers.
“We could probably push another 300 or 400 cows through the barn in the same amount of time and not add another employee with these,” Nightengale says. While that’s not really in the cards for the dairy in the short-term, it could be possible in the future.
The farm has yet to run the units for a full day of milking – both morning and night shift. Nightengale says the farm is waiting to fully reassign milking procedures and roles until they see the performance of the units every shift over a longer period of time. Onfarm Solutions anticipates that the automated arms’ current operating speed of 4 to 5 seconds per stall will only get faster with more trial and testing.
The dairy currently has two milkers and a cow pusher per milking shift. Milkers were responsible for spraying cows before milking and the cow pusher would assist in spraying cows after units came off. With the automated system, the dairy doesn’t see eliminating any positions but rather redistributing roles on the milking shift. So far the milkers don’t seem to mind the new system.
“There’s no pushback from them. If anything, it’s supposed to make their job easier, to take a bit of the physical load of milking off of them,” Nightengale says. “They’ve all adapted to it pretty well so far.”
Arnott says the accuracy of the teat spraying system is already in the 90th percentile, but he believes with further testing it can be even higher. The ability to eliminate a position or reassign labor should make the return on investment of the system “really short.”
Total time for install is one aspect of the system the team will also be working on. Most parallel parlors milking more than 2X have smaller windows of opportunity to work to get the system installed. However, with more installation opportunities, Arnott anticipates his company will get faster at fitting installations into tight downtime windows. The company already has lots of installation experience. More than a 1,000 of its other automated teat spray systems have been installed in more than 30 countries worldwide.
Arnott sees the market for the new system to be in the 1,000s of potential installations.
“We’re definitely seeing a move towards rotary parlors for very large dairy operations, but the majority of larger dairies in the U.S. are still milking in parallel parlors,” Arnott says. “The great thing about this system is it’s retrofittable. You don’t need to build a new parlor to be able to automate it now … I think this is a really big step forward.”
Excellent technology , Will help on udder health No Contamination to the tests..👍👍