The future of dairy farming ...

The faces of Australia’s dairy industry future, Rebekah and Nick Dornauf with son Angus, hope to inspire kids checking out their hi-tech robotic dairy at Deloraine. Photo by Sharon Webb

Dornauf’s high tech dairy robots inspire kids

Sharon Webb

NICK AND Rebekah Dornauf are the faces of Australia’s dairy industry future, and now they’re sharing their vision with Tasmania’s future dairy farmers.

The couple hosted an open day on their Deloraine farm, Gala, last month, where their 100 plus Day in the Dairy visitors included 40 fascinated primary school students from Launceston Church Grammar School.

‘We’re passionate about the technology of our dairy. We enjoy breaking down the stereotypes of dairy farming and what a career in farming might offer’, Nick said.

‘We take pride in sharing with the next generation of wannabe farmers what a modern tech savvy career in farming can offer.’

According to Rebekah there’s a problem across the world with the perception of dairying.

‘We’re just doing our bit. You can either be part of the problem or try to fix it.’

Looking down on the cows moving into the Dornauf ’s eight robots to be milked, the Grammar kids had a multitude of questions, from how many times a day the Dornauf’s 600 cows are milked to the significance of the white tags in their ears.

The truth is, these cows wander in to be milked whenever they feel like it, 24 hours a day, and wander back out to their assigned paddock of the day.

It’s all so easy. No herding, no inhuman early starts for milkers, no fixed milking commitments twice a day.

The dispenser in each robot?

‘Lollies’, Nick confided to the kids.

‘Grain is like lollies to cows and makes milking more enjoyable for them, balancing their diet, along with the robot’s brushes cleaning their coats and the tiny spa bath washing their teats before milking.’

But how do cows know to go for milking, one boy asked.

‘The secret about cows is they love routine’, Nick said. ‘If we can provide the exact same consistency every day they are the happiest cows in the world.’

The white tag on each cow is like a driver’s licence logging it into the computer system.

The tag tells Nick and Rebekah how often a cow comes to be milked and records the shape of the cow’s udder for the robot where it needs to attach the cups to teats. Higher yielding cows turn up for milking three or four times a day.

Most importantly, the computer system records and measures the composition of the cow’s milk, allowing the farmer to identify the onset of diseases like mastitis (inflammation of the udder).

‘This is one of the factors making a robotic dairy, of which there are only about 40 in Australia, worth the cost’, said Nick.

Cows simply live longer in systems like these.

‘We find cows’ ailments faster and treat them earlier than under conventional dairy systems, thanks to the technology and meters available’, Nick said.

‘Cows live about a year longer than on conventional farms, and generally as cows get older they have the potential to produce more milk each year.’

When a student asked about the green stickers on the cows’ backs, Nick said, ‘It’s like a scratchy’.‘We don’t have bulls on this farm, so when a cow is in season, another cow will mount it, scratching the sticker and turning it grey.

‘When we see that we call the insemination technician. We use semen from the best bulls in the world.’

The Dornaufs are third generation dairy farmers and are no doubt hoping their son Angus, one year old, will be the fourth.

Nick’s grandparents started in the 1960s with 60 cows in a traditional walk-through dairy.

Now the family owns 2300 cows on four farms around Deloraine. Gala is the only robotic dairy, employing around 20 locals who work on other Dornauf farms when not needed.

Nick and Rebekah, both university educated, installed their DeLaval robots two years ago looking to future proof their industry. They hope to inspire youngsters to take up high tech farming too.