Darragh McCullough: 'My dad was among the first group of farmers to take the plunge and robotic milking machines'

Darragh McCullough pictured on his farm in Stamullen, Co. Meath. Picture credit; Damien Eagers / INM

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You know you're getting old when you start remarking on the passage of time. So I was confirming my oldie status last week marvelling over technological advances in farming over the last 20 years.

For it was in 1999 that my dad installed three Lely robotic milking machines on the farm here at Elmgrove.

He was among the first group of four farmers in the country to take the plunge, and it was all terribly exciting.

Remember, this was when I got my first mobile phone, and here was a machine that was able to send me a text message to say that there was a problem and flag a cow with mastitis.

It was the start of the Celtic Tiger and as a farm only 40km from O'Connell Street in Dublin, we were feeling the brunt of the sudden labour shortage.

It was also an era prior to the mass flow of migrant labour around the EU from new entrants like Latvia and more recently Romania.

So while the arrival of a machine that could extract clean milk from a kicking, defecating and urinating animal 24-7 seemed like a complete no-brainer, the first movers on new innovations rarely make the real savings.

In the subsequent years each of those first four farmers sold up their robots and reverted back to traditional herring-bone or rotary parlour set-ups.

But fast-forward 20 years and Lely have the fifth version of their robot available, where energy usage has been significantly reduced and the capacity has increased from a maximum of 60 cows per machine to the point where some farmers are covering 90 cows with each robot.

One of my dad's former discussion group colleagues is looking at installing up to five robots on his farm, bringing total robot numbers operating in Ireland to close to 1,200 on nearly 600 farms.

Worldwide there are an estimated 50,000 robots working. The next step for some farmers close to urban areas is the concept that they can pasteurise their own milk, and even offer speciality milk such as milk from a particular cow with naturally high levels of milk solids.

It feels like the holy grail of milking technology: a robotic arm that could work on either a rotary or a herring-bone set-up must be just around the corner. In fact a milking parlour manufacturer swore to me that he would have that concept commercialised within two years… five years ago.

And some of the fundamental issues with robots - such as their capital cost and adaptability to extensive grazing - are still stopping more farmers from going that route.

The milking robot proves to me that while nothing stays the same, change will always be gradual.