Dutch machinery brand Lely has announced a brand new stable of smart-tech machinery for the dairy barns of the future.
The three new robots are the Lely Sphere, Lely Sphere N-Capture and Lely Horizon — all launched at the Lely Future Farm Days event in early October.
The Sphere collects waste in barns, separating manure and urine, and delivering waste to the Sphere N-Capture system.
The N-Capture then converts and manages emissions, creating three valuable types of fertiliser.
Lely head of innovation Korstiaan Blokland said the practical robot was easy to deploy and played an important role in making dairy farms more sustainable and circular in their supply chain.
“Lely Sphere is designed to help dairy farmers exploit the valuable nutrients in manure to the maximum,” Mr Blokland said.
On four test farms the Sphere reduced ammonia emissions in barn systems by about 70 per cent.
The Sphere has been in development since 2015 and has been operational since 2017.
The third big announcement was the Lely Horizon, a new management system labelled the “next step towards a bright future in dairy automation”.
It will be replacing the Lely T4C system over the course of 2020 and 2021.
Lely senior product manager Freddie Ruijs said in a world where data and digitisation was key, the dairy farm could not be left behind.
“At Lely we feel it is time to use all available, relevant data in an intelligent way,” Mr Ruijs said.
“That is exactly what Horizon is all about. It connects equipment and suppliers on the farm ... data is processed into actionable information that is always accessible on any device in a user-friendly way.”
Imagine being able to search how much grain you fed in March, cow #919’s fertility data since her first pregnancy or be tipped off when a cow is showing signs of ketosis.
The Horizon was created with the help of more than 100 farmers and 75 engineers, designers, vets , and AI specialists from seven countries over a two-year period.
The Lely Future Farms Day 2020 featured several other space-age machines, including the fully automated Lely Exos harvester, which specialises in collecting fresh grass from pasture and feeding the clippings to cows.
Lely chief executive Andre van Troost said important results have been achieved by the company in the past two years.
The ideal farm Lely is working towards is a place where repetitive tasks are all automated and cows can move freely, behaving naturally with guaranteed welfare because their robotic carers are working 24/7.
“We live in a rapidly changing world where the population continues to grow,” Mr van Troosts said.
“We desperately need farmers, because we expect the demand for food to increase by 70 per cent by 2050.
“The impact of farming on the environment is also coming under increasing scrutiny, and regulations are becoming stricter.
“Dairy farmers therefore have to change the way they work to guarantee their future.”
Lely will be focusing its Future Farm machines on the Dutch market, but says the tech has international potential.