Mankinmylly farm - Finland

Mankinmylly farm

Location: Savitaipale, Finland
Owners: Paula Havo-Ossi and Pasi Ossi, children Eveliina and Valtteri
No of dairy cows: 65
Breed of cows: 20 % Holstein-Friesian 80 % Ayrshire
Milking system: DeLaval voluntary milking system (VMS)
No of milkings per day: 2,5

The history of Mankinmylly farm starts at the beginning of the 1910's. Paula’s parents, Sirpa and Heikki Havo, developed their farm from 1970. In 1976, an Alfa Laval stanchion barn for 38 cows was built on the farm; it was over four times larger than the average barn at the time.

In 2002, when the farm was transferred to the next generation, Paula Havo-Ossi and Pasi Ossi started to think about new possibilities. They were interested in renovating the barn. A visit to a farm with robotic milking struck their interest and they started planning in earnest. Because Paula and Pasi had no experience in planning and building a barn, they decided to get professional design help.

They found that there were very few true professionals. Cost estimates, the usability of the construction drawings and their functional quality varied. In the end they decided to prepare a new cost estimate and changed the building plans from using arch trusses to pre-cast concrete elements. DeLaval was chosen as the supplier of equipment and barn stalling. The construction of new part of the barn began in April 2005 and was finished just four months later, with a automatic milking system in use from October 2005.

Milk quality

The change from a stanchion barn to automatic milking and loose house is a challenge for a dairy farm. At Havo-Ossi, the transfer to a loose house and a milking robot was quite easy. The owners say the most difficult things were the adjustment in thinking and in teaching the cows from a stanchion barn to lie in their cubicles. The need for culling due to the robot was small and the introduction of new animals was easy.

The farm’s current average milk yield is 9,800 kilograms and the somatic cell count is around 100,000. Paula and Pasi have set 11,000 kilograms as a realistic yield goal after the barn’s “fill-up phase” is over and there is a smaller percentage of heifers present.

Paula and Pasi say one of the advantages of automatic milking is being able to milk cows with low udders without a backup system. “Monitoring the animals is easy. All important animal information is always visible on one screen at the computer. It is not necessary to search for the information of a single animal separately. This facilitates the general monitoring and makes the management more individual,” says Pasi.

There are fewer cases of mastitis on the farm than on average in the area and in practice, only the colostrum is milked separately. Teat dip is used during milking with consumption per cow of around five litres.

In mastitis cases, the treatment can be started early. The first mastitis reaction is normally seen on the farm with a change of the milk’s electrical conductivity. To get targeted treatment, milk from the mastitis cow is cultured at the regional laboratory. The bacteria identification of a mastitis cow’s milk comes back in two to four days.

The milk is cooled in a flow-controlled cooling tank. It monitors the amount of milk inside the cooling tank and adjusts the cooling accordingly. This avoids the risk of the milk freezing, even if the tank only contains one cow’s milk.

The farm’s milking robot is serviced three times a year. They have a service person on call at all times, a clear service contract and a helpdesk service.

Feeding

Correct and plentiful feeding help achieve maximum milk production. In the Havo-Ossi barn, the silage is dispensed with a belt feeder and a hopper. “It is easy to bring enough silage for a longer period of time from the bunker silo to the hopper and the automated belt feeder distributes silage up to nine times a day. This maximises the amount of silage eaten." The concentrated feed used is grain (maximum eight kilograms) while the protein and energy supplement is a semi-concentrated feed. The ALPRO™ herd management system controls the feeding stations.

“Even though the grazing obligation in EU does not apply because the cows are in loose housing, an outdoor run of 420 square metres and a barn connection will be made. The cows will have free access to it during summer and partial access during the winter.” The calves have calf feeders for soured milk and as much hay and silage as they wish. Six to eight litres of sour milk is fed daily to each calf to help the calf learn to eat and ruminate better.

Crops and forages

At Havo-Ossi there are 42 hectares for growing feed for 65 cows. The silage crops are considerably above average. The farm is in the South Karelia Silage Club, where people from over 20 farms gather regularly to compare the amount and quality of silage crops and exchange experiences or ideas.

Herd management

After Finland joined the EU, the farm accounting changed completely. At Havo-Ossi, a clear plan is made for the large investments, with an estimate of when the investment is paid or when it produces enough to pay for itself.
The cropping and fertilization plans as well as the cost-effectiveness and tax accounting are done at the farm. A lot of resources are directed to breeding the stock, which is very important for the farm’s production. The breeding plan is made as often as twice a year.

“We can’t finance the barn by selling timber, like some people do,” says Paula, referring to the low percentage of forest on the farm’s total area. When they started planning the barn, the owner’s had a clear idea that an investment made in the barn should be regained from the barn with increased production. When making investment in their barn, they started by seeking the help of a planning consultant to make the cost estimate. The estimate they got proved much too small when they reviewed it with the barn building team. Luckily, it was easy to change the plans before building began; the type of building changed into an element building by Lujabetoni and the equipment supplier was changed to DeLaval.

Paula and Pasi are happy with their decision. “We had no experience in barn planning, that's why we chose a professional consultant to do the planning. Fortunately, the mistakes in the barn never left the consultant’s drawing board. The present solution with the VMS was absolutely the best solution for us. We don’t need backup systems for the barn and it feels like we have less trouble than the owners of other robots. The VMS simply works,” state Paula and Pasi.

Cow comfort

In the Havo-Ossi barn, the stanchion barn and the new loose housing are combined. The new, two-row loose house is 40 metres long and 14 metres wide. The milking robot is located in one end of the building, near the calf boxes.

The short building time was made possible with the materials used. The inner walls are painted with an epoxy paint, which makes them easy to clean. To improve the cows’ hoof health, the slatted floors in the barn are covered with 16 mm thick rubber coverage on the feeding alley side. A cable scraper is used for manure removal 12 times a day. The scraper is timer operated.

Cubicle dividers are used in the resting area and there’s a 70 cm wide strip left in front of the animals. Besides giving the animals plenty of room to move their heads, the strip also functions as a useful walkway. It makes quick movement inside the barn possible without adding to the width of the barn. A 40 mm thick cow mat is used in all cubicles.

There is a treatment pen beside the milking robot to make animal health easier to manage, into which the animal is guided directly from the robot through a sorting gate. Thanks to the separate pen cubicles, the cows remain well in place and the treatment pens have received many compliments from people, such as the inseminator.

Enough calf space is built for raising the planned number of heifer calves. The bull calves leave for a beef cattle farm at the age of one to two weeks.

The future

Paula and Pasi feel that the milking robot is the true strength of their farm and say the work has become so much lighter than before. “We could manage another herd of 65 cows with the same effort as today,” say Paula and Pasi. They are now following the situation and monitoring new opportunities such as buying more arable land. Their goal is to leave a viable, profitable and debt-free farm for their children when the time comes.