Lely is the leading global producer of robotic systems for dairy farmers. Founded in 1948 as a family business, Lely has been on a mission to make farmer's lives easier by offering innovative solutions for almost all activities in the cowshed, including milking, feeding, or cleaning.
With over 1600 patents and 3 R&D departments, Lely is a renowned farming innovator serving customers from more that 45 countries.
Lely decided to revolutionize their robotic milking by personalizing cow treatment during the milking process. In 2020, Lely robots milked over 2 million cows every day, resulting in more than 5 million milking sessions needed to be optimized daily.
Even though the robots offer farmers plenty of settings to customize the milking process for each cow, the manual setup would require the farmer to tweak more than 40 knobs before each milking.
Therefore, the majority of milking was executed with group settings for cows in a similar lactation stage. Farmers saw significant value in using individualized treatment for their cows, however, they would not be able to handle the configuration manually.
Datamole delivered a solution that automatically calculates optimal treatment for each cow every time the animal visits the milking robot. Each cow is described with its history of production, milk quality, last visit, stage of lactation and many others.
The solution was based on the following components:
The system automatically adjusts the milking settings for each cow. It provides the animals with the best possible treatment based on the measured data.
Farmers enjoy all the benefits of personalized treatment for their cows. Optimal milking routines result in a positive impact on animal welfare as well as overall farm performance.
Thanks to the algorithms collecting data about milking performance, the system is also able to evaluate any deviations, and thus helps farmers detect potential sickness in its early stages.
