Land Chamber Urges Farmers to Consider Robots Carefully
AUSTRIA – Farmers contemplating investing in milking ‘robots’ should be aware of the downside as well as positives, the agricultural chamber has advised.
20 September 2013
1 minute read
The chamber says that labour saving and a boost in yields can result from installing robots.
Furthermore, reading equipment makes herd health monitoring easy and somatic cell counts simple to track.
But, the adjustment and cash outlay present challenges to some farms, especially those with cash flow difficulties and high borrowing.
In upper regions of Austria, 120 automated milking systems are currently in use. The Agricultural Chamber states that these farms have noted the greatest labour savings in the office as data can be collected more efficiently but observations still need to be done in person.
Producers are warned that computer literacy is vital if the systems are to work and a reliable engineer is a must.
The first robot was installed in 2008 in Carinthia. Since then, the industry has noted an improvement in the ‘social conditions’ of modern dairy farms.
TheCattleSite News Desk
