AROUND 550 farmers from Pembrokeshire and beyond visited Velindre Farm near St Nicholas last week to see the county's biggest rotary milking parlour in action.

The Velindre open day was organised to coincide with the official opening of Colin Hancock's Manorway Store on the Dyffryn, Goodwick. Colin installed Velindre's 70 unit, Dairy Master Swiftflo Revolver Rotary Parlour last September.

"Everything here revolves around the cow," Daniel Harries from Velindre Farm told the assembled crowd.

"We do everything we can to keep the cow as happy as we can which goes from the bedding to the mattresses. We have very strict protocols in everything we do."

At Velindre Farm 470 cows come through the parlour, producing 36 litres per cow per day. The milk per cow per year is 11,464 litres.

Cows are prepped when they come into the parlour and it takes 60 seconds from the start of prep to put the cups on. The average milking time is five minutes per cow.

Average lying time is 12 hours per cow per day on three times a day milking.

"The UK average is around 9.5 hours per day with the majority of UK farms on twice a day milking," said Daniel. "This figure alone highlights how comfortable our cows are."

"Everything we do here is towards fertility," he added. "The pregnancy rate is currently 23. We have strict protocols on fertility. Every cow has been bred by day 84."

Dan said he had researched every possible option when choosing a new parlour, before choosing the DairyMaster Swiftflo Revolver.

Edmond Harty, CEO of DairyMaster, made a presentation to the assembled farmers, telling them that by 2020 an additional1,000,000,000 more litres of milk will be needed in the world.

He said DairyMaster's technology was unique:

"We milk a cow by emulating what a calf does," he said. The aim of that is to get better udder health, better milk yield and better information to the farmer.

"It's about getting each bit of performance out of the cow. It's about targeting each cow individually. We look at the whole thing as a cycle.

"Our machines are one minute quicker per cow. We have the lowest level of liner slip of any milking machine in the world. The Swiftflo Rotary parlour is a voice assist parlour. It talks to you and tells you different things when you need to know them."

He also talked about the company's innovative moo monitor heat detecting system which was dreamt up on a flight to Canada and based on nano technology used for rockets and torpedos. The technology sends data directly to the farmer's mobile phone when the cow is in heat.

"Cows calf 24 days earlier across the herd," he added.

Colin Hancock who helped organise the event said it was great for his company, Colin Hancock Milking Machines, to show other farmers what they can do and for Daniel to show off his cows.

"It's a bit of a celebration for us and to have this many people here is great," he said. "It's good to have the confidence to show people the milking parlour in the process of milking cows and good for people to see the cows are comfortable and happy.

"DairyMaster is not so much looking at the herd but looking at the health of the individual cow and the happier the cows the more profitable they will be for the farmer."

After the event Daniel added that the feedback he'd had from those who attended the event was very positive.

"The most important thing for me was, although we do have new buildings with a state of the art milking parlour, everyone commented on how well all the cows looked," he said.

"This was great to hear, as all the development we have done here is to make the cows happy."