Farmer Focus: Will robot shed be ready for Christmas?

It soon comes round, does Christmas. There never seems to be enough time in December to get everything done, especially when there’s an ongoing project – in this instance, our switch to robotic milking.

I seem to have been farming 6am-9am and 4pm-7pm, and building 9am-4pm, since summer.

We got the slats and channels finished, then had a small break to do full-time farming until we got the OK from the Rural Payments Agency for the robot grant. Since then, we just haven’t stopped.

See also: Video: Robotic cattle feeder on track for five-year payback

About the author

Tom Hildreth

Livestock Farmer Focus writer Tom Hildreth and family grow grass and maize for the 130-cow herd of genomically tested 11,000-litre Holsteins near York supplying Arla. The Hildreths run a café, ice cream business and milk vending machine on the farm.

Read more articles by Tom Hildreth

I don’t think anyone quite appreciates how much work is involved in installing milking robots when they order them, but jobs seem to pile up as the project progresses.

You realise how much you have done, but also how much there is still to do.

We are getting towards the last few stages now. Robot rooms are built and concreted out with drains all in the right places, resin floor painted, and the cable and pipe bridge over the feed passage completed.

Gates and concrete panels have been ordered, and electricity is now down at that end of the shed.

The robots themselves have just been bolted down, and every day there are more pipes and cables getting plumbed in.

By the time this goes to print, the fitters should have finished. Then the robots will be ready for commission in the new year.

I don’t usually comment on any government goings-on, but when I was at the north-eastern Holstein meeting recently, I heard someone call the changes to the agricultural inheritance tax a “tragedy tax”. I thought that was a perfect description.

If Mum and/or Dad pass the farm on and don’t live long enough, we are hit with a tax bill. If they do outlive son or daughter, they are hit with the tax bill.

It wouldn’t quite be as bad, but we already pay income tax before we pay the mortgage on the land, and we would have to pay capital gains tax on selling, before paying the tragedy tax.

So, it’s three times the thieves in numbers 10 and 11 are trying to take money off us.

On that note, I hope everyone has a very merry Christmas and a prosperous new year!