New dairy technology designed to add efficiency, profitability

MADISON, Wis. — A new tool for dairymen is designed to provide technology to drive efficiency and profitability in their herds.

“DairyProX delivers more automation in a conventional milking setup and the goal is to bring simplicity for the operator and consistency to the cow,” said James Bringe, milking equipment sales representative for GEA Farm Technologies Inc.

“The In-Liner Everything technology is happening every day with robotic rotaries,” he said during a presentation at the Knowledge Nook held at the World Dairy Expo. “This is technology we’ve used for 15 years.”

The process of cleaning, prepping, applying pre-dip, milking the cow and post dip all happens automatically.

“That is the technology and efficiency we’re going to deliver to a conventional milking site with the idea of fixing a lot of the challenges we’ve been hearing from customers to automate the milking process,” Bringe said.

The first step is for a person to attach the milker unit.

“At that point stimulation starts inside the milk liner, we use water to remove debris, then pre-dip, sanitization, foremilk starts to come out and we analyze it with a color sensor,” Bringe said. “Good milking starts, there is a post dip application and then the unit is removed.”

The barrel of the teat has teat dip on all sides, the GEA spokesman noted.

“We’re leaving a droplet on the end,” he said. “This is exactly the same process we use today in robotic milking.”

Proper stimulation, Bringe said, has big benefits to get cows in the ready mode to milk.

“We know by looking at the data what the process of being consistent every day, three times a day, does for a cow,” he said. “That is why people put in automatic milking systems, cows love that consistency.”

The peak milk flows are much higher with the DairyProX system, Bringe said.

“Durations shorten up dramatically, in and out time gets shorter and there are lower somatic cell counts,” he said.

Consistently delivering the correct amount of pre and post dip is a benefit for teat health.

“Teat dipping in the liner under a slight amount of vacuum helps elongate the teat and get the predip into the folds of the skin,” Bringe said.

“Before the teat comes out of the cup, it’s in a sanitary environment,” he said. “So, before the teat end is exposed to the environment we dipped it — that’s as close to ideal as we can create.”

When dairymen can milk more cows faster and better, they won’t need as many people in the milking system.

“We have to rethink how we allocate labor,” Bringe said.

“On-boarding is easier — who can do the work and how you train them is much simpler,” he said. “And we make the work a lot better for the person doing it which is a huge benefit to keep your people working for you.”

There are several ways to look at return on investment, Bringe said.

“There are savings in labor, but other goals may be better milk quality or the ability to milk more cows,” he said.

“We expect this system to pay for itself in three to five years,” he added. “Every farm will be different, some will be quicker and some a little longer.”

From a real-life example, Bringe said, using DairyProX reduced the milking time from eight to six hours.

“Maybe instead of milking 500 cows, now you can milk 700 cows,” he said. “Or, maybe a farm will go from two times a day milking to three times a day — there are many scenarios for this system to pay for itself.”

DairyProX will be available for purchase by dairymen this fall.

“Application for stage I is parallel parlors with a subway,” Bringe said. “And we will roll out this product to other segments, including rotary parlors.”

“There are a lot of farms that are 20 years old that need remodeling, so we want to drive more efficiency in what they already own,” he said.