Feed insight prevents run outs on robots
Following the installation of two robots at W. Wheelwright & Sons, Richard Wheelwright and his 90 cows loved the system, his only regret, he wished he’d got some form of weighing system on the silos.
Fast forward 18 months and Richard’s ‘fairy godmother’ Rob Cockcroft, phoned him from Dairytech and said I’ve found just the thing for you… FeedAlert silo monitoring!
A simple retro fit solution, Richard purchased two systems, one for each silo. Installation was easy and setup involves zeroing, then calibrating the system to set the weight scale. Richard explained “Because I have two silos I got the first empty as starting from empty obviously gives the greatest accuracy, Ian in the FeedAlert team was great, he helped me get the best from each silo, once the first silo was up and running I was able to do the second.”
“I look at my data on the app, it’s so easy, I do it at breakfast, I just open the app and check in on the silo levels and order feed when I need to, being on the app I can literally do it when I’m not at the farm too.”
Richard went with the App based solution, Envision which works utilising a strain gauge sensor. Richard added “I look at my data on the app, it’s so easy, I do it at breakfast, I just open the app and check in on the silo levels and order feed when I need to, being on the app I can literally do it when I’m not at the farm too. The system takes one reading at 11.30pm and I know I use 700kg a day from the two bins, I can see when they’re running low, but I really like the alerts which come by email and text, they’re good reminders and so that way I never forget.” Richard runs the system in conjunction with the Lely robots, after each delivery he chooses to input the weight from the silo into the Lely system and watches the levels reduce together, a belt and braces approach. Richard said “it works, it’s so simple and it works, I trust it because I’ve seen it for nearly a year now and its not a million miles out, every time. It fascinates me that that little sensor on the leg is so clever!”
An added benefit when zero grazing
In winter Richard shares the ration between the two silos, so there’s always a backup but in the summer the system really comes into in to its own. The farm operates a zero-grazing system, in the summer the two silos hold different rations 21% and 16% protein, the diet is mixed to suit the grass quality, which obviously changes over the summer. As the usage of each product is totally reliant on the grass quality, the contents of each silo decrease at different levels, one runs low before the other, the alerts really come into their own as a timely reminder.
Richard can now focus on other tasks on the farm knowing that the reliable reminder comes in and he doesn’t constantly need to remember to physically check levels, the order goes in and it is smooth as clockwork.
Richard finished
