GLANYMOR
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Efficient Gary and Donna Mellow enjoying a cuppa in their well-appointed shed smoko room.
The 7.5kW submersible stirrer moves horizontally along the bottom of the pond lined with a Pondco liner.
Gary and Donna Mellow, who milk 540 cows on their coastal Taranaki property, wanted to build a new shed that was labour-efficient, future-proof and cost-effective.
time to get more involved in other aspects of farming,” he says. The new 60-bail rotary sits a kilometre or so off the coast of Opunake in South Taranaki, and has views out to sea that would be the envy of many city slickers.
They had been milking two herds in two separate sheds on adjacent farms since the purchase of a neighbouring farm a few years ago. While some minor upgrades to one of the existing rotary sheds had been completed, this was only a stop gap measure until full amalgamation of the two farms was possible, says Gary. As well as the efficiencies from amalgamating the two farms, a big driver behind getting the new dairy up and running was “getting me out of the shed,” says Gary, who has been involved in farming since he left school. “After 35 years of continuous milking, it was
Deciding on design
PLA SY
Gary set out to build a shed that would deliver the efficiencies he was after without over-capitalising or making things overly complex. “We looked at lots of sheds before we started. We asked a lot of questions. While we haven’t built the flashest shed around; for our situation it is more than adequate to do the job, and do it well,” says Gary. The decision about where to draw the line with technology that would be incorporated into the new shed was a hard one, says Donna. “We wanted a good shed with some automa-
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Coast & Country
simplicity delivers Davieth Verheij from Agfirst Engineering examines the pump control area, which moves effluent through the farm’s underground system at a rate of 20,000L per hour.
Looking up the yard toward the shed.
Glanymor tion. Deciding what to include and what not to include was one of the toughest decisions in the whole build.” Developing a labour-efficient dairy was a major priority so they chose milking plant and automation that supported this objective. The plant also needed to work alongside the Mellow’s existing herd management system, which they wanted to retain. They decided on DeLaval MPC150 automatic cup removers with retention arms, teat sprayers, candle wash jetters, a yard floodwash system and a myriad of other features that make the shed labour efficient, says Gary. One of the main reasons the Mellows chose the parallel rotary PR2100 60 bail concrete platform with cabinet bails was because of the fold-out candle wash jetters, which are very easy to use.
It’s quick and easy to apply the cups to the jetters which fold out of a cavity at the base of each bail, according to DeLaval’s district sales manager Bruce Battersby. And you get better longevity out of the rubber jetter cups as well because easier placement means less wear and tear, says Bruce. The DeLaval MC53 milking clusters selected by the Mellows feature top flow technology, which means “there is more stable teat-end vacuum in the cluster at peak milk flows,” says Bruce. In keeping with their approach to keep things local where they could, the Mellows opted for a platform from Hotter Engineering. A pioneer in the development of rotary platforms, Hotter Engineering fabricate platforms in their central Taranaki workshop before sending them around the country. The platforms are also exported.