Customer testimonials
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Plumpton Head Farm
Farm location
Penrith, UKHerd size
350“The robots do a better job than I could—
and I know the cows better than anybody.
The individual quarter milking that the
robot provides is remarkable, and it also
yields more milk”
Six new DeLaval robots were installed for Richard Threlfell and his family at Plumpton Head Farm, near Penrith, in November 2020. The impact on the farm, and the family, has been a revelation. “The cows are being milked up to five times a day. The yield is already up 34 percent and we are likely to see some of the high yielding cows delivering more than 10,000 litres this year,” says Richard.
Since the mid-1990s the Threfell family have milked up to 250 cows in a 20/20 blue diamond herringbone parlour. Staffing the parlour has been an ever increasingly difficult task. After much deliberation six DeLaval V300 robots were installed on November 22nd, 2020. “We were able to benefit from a 40 percent grant scheme for the robots which really helped tip the decision,” he says. With the current idle time at 30% Richard plans to grow the herd to 350 over the coming years. “With 350 cows we will have the acreage to remain self-sufficient. I see also this as the right balance for us, as a family farm”
The planning and installation of the robots was handled by local dealer Mathers. When Richard’s grandfather first moved to the area, Mathers installed the family’s original herringbone parlour in 1964. “Their engineers are great and David [Mather] came to plan the shed himself,” says Richard.
Richard has a twelve-year-old son, Matthew, and a fourteen-year-old daughter, Maisie. “It’s a much more appealing farming system to be sharing with the next generation. I could not expect them to relish a life of waking up at 4am and not finishing until 7pm seven days a week. I wanted to offer them a farm that they can manage sustainably and now I believe we have a model that both I, and they, can benefit from in the future.
- Labour efficient
“We no longer have a need for weekend staff which is a big help and a cost saving, unlike staff the robots are never late to work and always milk the cows in the most efficient way. We had staff who would rush at weekends so they could watch the match. It was hard to live with at times” - 34% increase in milk yeild
“The milk has always been there and sadly we would often see it on the beds when we were milking just twice a day. The old parlour was not an efficient way of milking high yielding cows. Some are being milked five times a day now, which is better for their health and more productive for the farm” - Improved herd health
“Our SCC’s are lower than ever, at just below 150,000 across the herd. We have previously had very few cases of mastitis and, since the robots went in, we haven’t seen any,” he says. He credits the teat cleaning capability of the robots with the SCC reduction and also suggests that the frequency of milking is helping the cows. “We couldn’t have achieved what the robots are doing now unless we put the cows through the parlour four times a day”