'Udderly' brilliant!
2005-08-23 12:56
Sydney - Imagine a world where farmers greet the dawn from their beds and cows milk themselves.
An Australian research consortium said on Tuesday that such a nirvana was not such a distant dream. They are working on a system that attracts cows to the milking shed and milks them with automated equipment while they feed.
"The cows will be queuing to voluntarily milk themselves," New South Wales Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald said at the launch of project FutureDairy.
"The technology represents a more natural milking system, where cows are milked on request and farmers are not tied down by the daily pressures and routines involved in dairy production," Macdonald told Australia's AAP news agency.
FutureDairy links the New South Wales state government, Dairy Australia, milk product producer DeLaval and the University of Sydney. The system uses feed to lure cows into milking sheds where suction cups automatically attach to the cows' udders.
FutureDairy project manager Professor Bill Fulkerson said the glory of FutureDairy is that farmers would no longer have to be up while it's still dark to herd their cows to the milking shed.
"We have an issue of trying to get enough labour on farms and I think this will attract people back into the dairy industry," Professor Fulkerson said.
"At the moment they just don't have enough social hours because they have to get up and milk every bloody morning." - Sapa-dpa
- SAPA