From the yard to the milking shed: New tech making dairy farming safer

A Mid Canterbury dairy farmer is relieved that new technology is making his job more efficient and safer.

Rick Butler is taking part in a pilot scheme, developed by Livestock Visibility Solutions, which streamlines cow movement from the yard to the milking shed.

The artificial intelligence, known as Flow, uses cameras to watch and track each animal moving through to the milking shed and then controls the backing gate.

"Before the staff would put the gate down and then they would manually press a button to bring the gate forward and so they'd have to have a look at the cows, move from their position … and sometimes they might push the cows a little hard, make it so they're too tight, squash together, that's not good for the cows," Butler said.

Butler said the new system has made "a huge difference with the calmness of the cows in the holding yard".

"It does save me a lot in labour, but the production of the cows — because they're less stressed — they make more milk because of that.

"If a cow has a foot problem that causes her to feel bad, she makes a lot less milk, considerably less milk, so when it all adds up, it easily pays for itself," Butler said.

The 10 farms that took part in the pilot, which has been running since December 2023, found milking was 18% quicker, power use dropped 9%, while animal injuries fell at least 15%.

Livestock Visibility Solutions chief executive Richard Appleby said the world-first system prevents cows from getting crowded, stressed, or unnecessarily pushed in the yard because of human error.

"We kept hearing farmers were frustrated with the time it takes to milk. We wanted to solve this problem, so we went to dairy farmers and asked them about it. The vast majority were unhappy with the current process and said they would pay to fix it.

"When you put Flow in, you're taking away a whole bunch of distractions and unnecessary tasks so you can focus on milking as fast and efficiently as you can. The difference of using it versus not is like night and day and the numbers speak for themselves," Appleby said.