Ag Research is New Zealand’s largest Crown  Research Institute (CRI). More scientists work for Ag Research than any other institute in New Zealand.

In 2009 their Tokanui farm took on a new role of being AgResearch’s newest Dairy Research Farm.

The state-of-the-art dairy research and development farm represents a major commitment to the future of dairy farming in New Zealand.

Milfos was chosen as the key supplier of milking and herd management solutions to the project. The project was unique is many ways. To start, two rotary platforms were installed under one roof. A 60 bail iFLOW rotary for milking the main herd and a 20 bail iFLOW rotary for scientific trial work.

Managing Director, Jamie Mikkelson says “The 20 bail rotary was the smallest the company had ever produced and had to be designed from scratch. The small size meant a number of technical hurdles to resolve however the result was an exceptionally good and functional product for the scientists working on the farm.”

Both rotaries feature top-of-the-line automation. Milk metering, cow ID, herd management, mastitis detection, and in bail feeding are just some of the standard options fitted to the machines.

There were many other special requirements that have lead Milfos to develop and commercialise into mainstream product lines. These include the discard line and sampler system. Ag Research wanted certain cows under research conditions to be excluded from milk collection to the main bulk milk tank. As this farm runs as a dual commercial and research farm this action for milk separation needed to be seamless. This was achieved with the development of smart management software and at bail controls.

Other products to be included were the iMESSAGE board. Ag Research staff wanted research cows to be alerted when they entered for milking. These cows are alerted at both the bail INTELSCAN Pro control box and the iMESSAGE Board. The large screen is easy to read and contains relevant operator information on the particular cow.

The iNTOUCH remote vision system is another innovation developed for the farm. The operators wanted to view cow visual ear tags and markings while taking milk samples. The iNTOUCH system features a 22” colour monitor with zoom option, all of which is contained in a waterproof housing.

The cows at the research farm wear the HR rumination collars. The collar system handles the cows electronic ID, heat detection as well as monitoring the cows rumination patterns. The collar records the rumination time of the cow in 2 hour time blocks and downloads this to the PC when the cow enters the parlour for milking.

The installation includes walk over weighers so each cow is weighed twice a day and several sorting gate stations. These stations are set up to automatically sort cows for general day to day management as well as for research works that the scientist’s are undertaken.

The Tokanui research farm will play an important part in the dairy industry’s future and Milfos are very much committed to working alongside our partners developing solutions to meet the ongoing challenges facing our farmers at the farm gate.