The evaluation of the intelligence of midland cows has had to be revised upwards by a family which installed one of the first robotic milking machine systems in Ireland.
The twin machines were installed a fortnight ago on the Fryday farm near Kilcormac, Co Offaly, which is run by brothers William and Richard Fryday with their father, James.
While the computer-controlled system has been well and truly tried out in the rest of Europe, it had not been tested on Irish cows before.
However, according to William Fryday, he was amazed at how quickly the cows, especially the younger ones, adapted to the machines.
The Dutch-manufactured Lley Astronaut machine is a single unit which the cow walks into and where feed may be delivered. When the cow is settled into the unit, an electronic arm with four teat cups and a scanner attached moves into position under the cow's udder. Each cow wears an electronic transponder.
The first time the cow is being milked, the scanner makes a map of the udder and stores the information with the corresponding number of the cow on a computer.
When this is done, the cups are placed in position on the teats and the cow is milked. Food is delivered to the cow as a kind of reward, but when she stops giving milk the machine instructs her to leave.
"If she does not want to move she gets a slight shock and if she remains on seeking food, she gets a stronger shock to direct her out of the milking unit," William Fryday said.
"It is amazing how some of the cows are adapting. Some of them are prepared to take the low-level shock in the hope of getting food or to finish food," he added. He said the training of the cows had been difficult but rewarding and only two of about 100 animals using the machines had to be returned to a conventional machine.
"We noticed that the younger cows were the smartest and began trying to get extra rewards from the system. It has been most interesting to see their reactions," he said.
William said that last year the family had built a milking parlour and had not installed a milking machine. They went to Scotland to see how the robotic machines worked. "We were impressed because not only did they save labour but the farmers there told us the yields from the cows were up by as much as 15 per cent because the cows were being milked on demand.
"It is really like having their own calf sucking them. They walk in when they want to be milked and it relaxes the cow, reducing stress and increasing the milk flow." He said the family, who milk 300 cows, decided to test out two units. They were installed a fortnight ago, a few days after two units were installed at the farm of former IFA president Mr Tom Clinton in Co Meath.
He said one of the benefits of robotic milking was that the system could give great control over the use of antibiotics and other drugs.
If a cow has been given antibiotics this information is placed in the central computer and the milk from that cow is isolated from the rest of the milk until the cow is clear again. The computer gives continuous printouts on each cow and can warn if a cow is developing mastitis.
"We are not as computer literate here as we would like to be but we are learning, and so far we are very happy with the way the operation has been going," said William.
The Frydays will be happy if they adapt as quickly to the robotic age as their cows have done.