From buckets to machines to robots, milking is hands-free

ROBOTIC milking parlours are becoming increasingly more common on Irish farms, and the unique ingenuity of them is that they know when, and decide when, it is time for a cow to be milked.

Lely, DeLaval, Fullwood and SAC are some of the most popular manufacturers of the machines, and the Lely Astronaut robotic milking system has been used by Moylough dairy farmer John Carrick for the last three years.
Each of John's herd of 75 Holstein-Friesian cattle, milked twice daily, wears an electronic tag around her neck. This tag allows the milking system to monitor a myriad of information on each individual cow.
It records what weight the cow is every time she is milked, and can identify when she might be getting sick, allowing the farmer to move quickly to solve the problem.

Read the full feature in this week's edition of The Tuam Herald