One decade of dairy advances for at Hedley

Hedley farmer Lisa Vening was happy with her technology 10 years ago. She’s since installed robots, a “manure vacuum” and significantly cut labour.

Robots are taking over the dairy industry and farmers say there are ‘no regrets’ with the new ways to ease labour, test herds and clean sheds.

Ten years ago, The Weekly Times reported on technological advances that could be expected by 2025 for dairy farmers in its State of the Dairy Industry feature. It included the prospects of using genomics to select bulls for heat tolerance, and modern ways to pregnancy-test and condition score animals instead of by palpate.

The Vening family's cow herd at the robotic dairy. Picture: Supplied

At Hedley, dairy farmer Lisa Vening installed a manure collector for her dairy in November 2024, and eight robotic milkers, Lely Astronaut A5, two years ago. It pregnancy-tested cows and tested cell count every third milking.

“We were happy with what we had then but when we got this, it blows your mind with the information. It takes three days to break the cows in from the old-style milking,” she said.

“We went from an old 30 aside Herringbone to a brand-new fancy, all the bells and whistles robots.”

She said the new technology eased labour on-farm, and meant quieter cows and a cleaner dairy.

“It’s just Peter and I, and two of the boys. There’s no 4 o’clock morning starts. We’re not out there milking the cows in -2 degrees anymore,” she said.

Peter, Lisa, Shawn and Trent Vening with a new manure collector to help labour on-farm. Picture: Supplied

Meanwhile, a manure collector is set to clean each hour. It used fewer than 1000L of water and meant no labour.

“We were probably using five times that to wash out and three hours of labour,” Ms Vening said.

“We know the dairy is being cleaned by itself, we know the cows are being milked by themselves, and if we need to go and check, we do.”

Genetics Australia chief executive Anthony Shelly said genomics in dairy had been one of the biggest advancements, with significant uptake across dairy farms during the past 10 years.

“It has allowed significant efficiencies to take place with breeding, but it’s also allowed farmers to have a deeper dive into the genetic picture of their cows that they wouldn’t see otherwise,” he said.

“Whether cows are more heat tolerant, their fertility traits, whether she’s resistant to mastitis, genomics has allowed them to use those tools and be more efficient.”

He said sexed semen had become a standard piece in most farms’ breeding programs as well as a dairy genetics evaluation system.

“Rather than have a whole-herd approach, farmers are tending to segment their herd,” Mr Shelly said.

Dairy Australia head of research investments Jay Mody said major genomics improvements during the past decade included cow performance, resilience and heat tolerance.

He said major leaps in technology were in feedbase and nutrition, soil advancements, water and effluent management, autonomous irrigation, enteric methane reduction and slow-release nitrogen products.

“These gains have supported farmer profitability in an increasingly challenging operating environment,” Mr Mody said.

Mr Mody said future advances could include new genomic selection, resilient pasture varieties, remote sensor technologies, uptake on virtual fencing, artificial intelligence and machine learning.