Tour a 2,000-Cow California Dairy | Lely Large Herd Dairy
The Ahlem family of Countyline, LLC chose Lely automation for the future of their large Jersey herd, and the dairy has become progressively more robotic since July of 2021. Upon completion, Countyline, LLC will be the largest robotic dairy in California with 32 Lely Astronaut A5 robotic milking systems milking 2,150 cows. Continue reading to learn more about this historic project.
📹In this video, learn how the dairy made the choice to go robotic.
🌊Learn about making the transition to robotic milking in separate waves.
📈Learn how the dairy uses data to evaluate performance and create cull lists.
Vance Ahlem is a fourth-generation dairy farmer who currently runs Countyline, LLC with his wife, Ashley, and his parents, Jim and Carol. The family has been at their current facility in Denair, California, since 2008. The operation's four free-stall barns were originally outfitted with 32 Boumatic milking robots that had been removed by the time the Ahlems purchased the farm and their team milked with a double 32 parallel parlor for over 10 years.
When considering the big picture of the Californian labor market, the dairy's team knew they needed to take a new direction. Part of Vance's research involved visiting the Lely Campus in Maasluis, the Netherlands.
"We spent the day at Lely's headquarters with Mr. van der Lely and visited Lely facilities in Denmark. Our facility is somewhat modeled after one we saw," said Vance. "It helped us to better understand what Lely is about and their free flow design. We were going with guided flow originally but seeing the robots in action convinced us free flow was the way to go."
Not only did this visit persuade Vance to go fully robotic, herds manager Laurenio Vitorino and the rest of his team were also all on board with the idea. The expertise and committed support of their local Lely Center TDR, Inc. was also a big part of their decision.
Vance advises other dairy producers who are considering robots to have their entire team on board and make sure to get their banker involved early on.
"Trust the process and support you get from Lely. It's a whole new way of managing people and animals," Vance said. "Reach out to those who have robots and don't be afraid to go visit. I visited Postma Dairy often and just sat and watched to try to fully understand how it works."
The Ahlems are excited about how far they've come with Lely automation and look forward to what's ahead. Vance admitted that they're still learning a lot about how to push the robots and themselves with this new milking process. The operation will eventually add eight Lely Juno automatic feed pushers to cut hours spent on manual feed pushing.
Vance is a firm believer that milking with robots is possible on a large scale, especially with how producers can continue to add on more machines over time.
"They're scalable. The thought that you can't run a large dairy with robots is quickly going to be put to rest, especially with the labor environment in California," said Vance.
The team at Lely North America is excited to see Countyline, LLC become more and more robotic with the help of Lely automation and can't wait to see the completion of this large project!
Learn more: https://www.lelylife.com/countyline-llc