In another timeline, Will Mahony could have been studying mechanical engineering at university in Melbourne.
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In fact, if it wasn’t for the robot milkers installed on the family farm at Bookar, Will probably would have taken up the course.
Instead, he’s found his niche with the high-tech milkers, working as a farm hand, but also managing the technical side of the dairy.
“That’s one of the big reasons why I chose not to go to uni,” Will said.
“We had talked about whether to go to another rotary or stepping into the next generation and going to the robots.
“If it was rotary, I probably wouldn’t have hung around and my brother was thinking the same.
“Plus, my father doesn’t want to put cups on any more so he’s happy to keep farming for a few more years.”
The family farm is into its fourth generation crossing 100 years.
Three of the generations still live on site, with Will’s father Matt and his younger brother Daniel running the business.
They usually milk around 500, but that has reduced to about 400 during autumn.
With another robot in the pipeline, they will increase the herd to 550-600.
Will, 22, grew up alongside his two brothers, Ed and Solly. Ed also works on the farm and Solly helps out occasionally.
The total farm is 800ha with a 300ha milking platform, including 75ha under irrigation.
Most of the farm is flat and dry, but part of the land edges onto undulating lake country, boosted by irrigation, which has been turned on again after an autumn break promised more but failed to deliver.
“We’ve bought in water once a week for the last six months because they like rainwater, not-so-much bore water,” Will said.
The herd is mostly Holstein, with some Jerseys, though they are being phased out.
The Jerseys were a bigger part of the herd when they turned to organic farming.
“Organic was good at the time,” Will said.
“We had a good price but the price dropped off.
“We went back to conventional when the prices evened up, it was hard to justify staying organic at that point.”
The old dairy was 40 years old and at the end of its life when the family started discussing options about four years ago.
“We don’t have accommodation on-farm so it’s hard to find workers and that was becoming an issue,” Will said.
“If you want to find someone, robots are a big selling point.
“I was in my last year at school and my brother was already working on the farm when we started talking about the replacement.
“We looked at other farms and at different brands to try to figure the best option for our farm. They all had different pros and cons but we went with DeLaval because we liked the way they put the cups on and because there’s a local dealer in Terang.”
The seven robots started in August 2024, 12 months after they started refitting the old dairy, with family members doing most of the structural work, just like Matt did when the former rotary dairy was built.
“We milked the last morning in the rotary and that day we started in the robots,” Will said.
“It was really full-on for three or four days while the cows didn’t know what they were looking at and for about two weeks it was a lot of pushing cows into robots, making sure they stand still so the cups go on properly.”
After two weeks, they began to walk in voluntarily. After two months, they started to learn to volunteer from the paddock.
Now 80 per cent of the herd volunteers all the time and they sweep the last cows out of the paddock.
Because the farm was coming from an organic background, it started from a fairly low baseline but production has increased consistently since the robots were introduced.
The cows like it.
“They’re calmer.
“In the rotary they were on edge and getting pushed around all the time, now they’re way more relaxed.”
The people like it too.
“We’re all happy to manage it.
“It’s not like it’s less work; you still do the same hours every day but it’s not the repetitive milking twice a day. You’re not locked into that schedule every day – it’s way more flexible.”
A new robot and vat will be installed soon. There’s only one vat at the moment so when the tanker collects milk, the cows can’t use the robots.
“With the extra vat, we can alternate and get rid of the down time,” Will said.
They plan to add 50-60 cows to the herd.
“We could run more than that but it’s more relaxed on everyone if you have room for down time.”
They have changed from three eight-week calvings to four tighter sessions for flatter milk production.
“To pay for the robots, you want them full all the time without big lulls,” Will said.
“We still had some low points with three eight-week calvings and they dragged out a bit; now we’ve gone to four shorter calvings.
“Hopefully with targeted flatter milk production we can get more of the fresh milk contract with Fonterra.”
Because the rotary was so old, it didn’t have information on diet, health or production.
“We were overwhelmed with the information at the start but now we have a better idea of production curves, cell count fluctuations.
“I check on the computer to make sure the cows are happy and we get notifications if they have low grain intake, high cell counts and stuff like that.
“We draft them out to have a look at them if needed.”
The cows average 1.9-2 milkings a day.
Will is happy with his decision.
“I was always going to do a gap year here and see which way I wanted to go and during the first six months we discussed what to do and decided on the robots in August 2023.
“I don’t like the city but I get to scratch that engineering itch here.”