Lely, which has doubled production in the last three years, has marked a special milestone by producing its 1,000th Vector feeding system.
According to the company, many dairy and beef farms across 31 counties use this system.
The 1000th Vector is on its way to Società Agricola Rendena San Michele’s dairy farm in Italy, to feed a herd of 117 to 130 lactating cows plus associated young stock, heifers, and dry cows.
Benefits of automatic feeding
Società Agricola Rendena San Michele has been using the Lely Vector feeding system for many years. The choice for the new generation mixing and feeding robot is a logical one, according to Roberto Tognato.
“The new mixing and feeding robot has improved in many aspects, but the faster auger motor was the deciding factor for us.”
“The Rendena cows are an autochthonous breed of the Alpine regions originating from the Rendena valley. This breed is at risk of extinction. Società Agricola Rendena is the farm with the highest number of Rendena cows worldwide.”
“Their feed efficiency, fat and casein production are better when they are fed with dry rations only. The faster auger motor ensures that dry rations are cut even better.”
More farmers switching to automatic feeding
According to Jelmer Ham, Product Manager Feeding at Lely International, the company has gained a “tremendous” amount of knowledge and experience with automatic feeding over the past decade.
Ham said the firm has listened to its customers, conducted research, and explored new avenues. “In doing so, we relied on proven principles of automatic feeding and improved a large part of the system.”
Lely can see reliance on the Vector growing. It stated that the added value of automatic feeding is recognised by increasingly more dairy and beef farmers.
“It is a revolutionary system that, in addition to energy and labour savings, has an unprecedented positive effect on cow health and feed efficiency.”
“By feeding more often and more precisely, the nutrients in the feed are optimally utilised. The intelligent software also enables steering based on profitability instead of just on milk yield and weight gain.”
“Both dairy and beef farmers can calculate the effect on their margin of a change in a ration and thus improve their operating results.”
Last year, Lely saw sales of the Vector grow significantly. In 2021, they expect this upward trend to continue even more strongly.
Lely, therefore, expects that automatic feeding will be just as accepted and applied as automatic milking in the future.
