The farm, owned by Agrícola Ancali and part of the Bethia Group, already has 16 DeLaval VMS, which were installed in 2014, resulting in an average yield of 45.2 liters for the 920 cows going through the robotic milking system.
DeLaval states this is a 10% increase in milk production since the system was installed, and also reduces labor costs.
Plans for future growth
Pedro Heller, CEO at Agrícola Ancali said that as well as increased production, results have included better animal welfare conditions and less stress for the cows.
“Firstly, we compared the benefits of using DeLaval VMS systems versus rotary milking system,” Heller said.
“We started using robots for 500 cows, and when we saw the economic benefits and we realized that it was possible to improve production per cow by 10% we decided to further explore.”
Heller added that the plan is to have the ‘best’ 4,500 cows milked by DeLaval VMS and that the system is good for future growth.