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March 2000 |
Dairy Research Corporation (fore-runner to Dexcel and DairyNZ) announces its latest Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) of “Completely automating milking on New Zealand Dairy Farms” |
| March 2000 | The Waikato Automatic Milking Farmer Group is formed |
| April 2000 | AGMARDT grants $170k of seed funding and the Dairy Board Global Program approves $100k in co-funding, DRC agree to contribute cows and land to the value of $257k |
| December 2000 | The project team is established, comprising the late Murray Woolford, Kevin Bright, Peter Copeman, an international collaborator Ian Ohnstad (UK) and a newly appointed scientist, Jenny Jago |
| January 2001 |
A joint venture partnership is established between Dexcel Ltd and Sensortec |
| February 2001 |
Number 4 Grazing Unit is chosen as the site of the new research farm |
| May 2001 | The project is branded “Greenfield Project” |
| June 2001 |
The first robot is commissioned and the first fully automatic milking system in New Zealand begins milking cows |
| October 2001 | The herd expands to 40 cows |
| May 2002 | The first remote cow selection unit is commissioned |
| September 2002 | FRST (Foundation for Research, Science and Technology) agrees to fund $570k/yr for 4 years; Dairy InSight matches funding |
| November 2002 |
The herd expands to 80 cows, and the milking platform expands to 23ha January 2003 An International Patent is granted (Selection system and method for milking animals, AO 03/000044 A1) |
| September 2003 |
A second robot is commissioned. The dairy is expanded to accommodate offices, labs and visitor seminar room. Herd size is increased to 145 and the milking platform to 43ha |
| October 2003 | Visit by President Hu Jintao of the People’s Republic of China and Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark |
| February 2004 |
RMS (Robotic Milking Systems) Ltd is launched - a joint venture company to provide extension and support for commercial adopters of automatic milking |
| June 2004 |
RMS Ltd is awarded Best Site at Mystery Creek National Field Days |
| July 2004 |
The Greenfield Team is presented with the New Zealand Society of Animal Production Innovation Award |
| September 2004 |
A spectrometer is attached to the milking robot and is used to achieve the first online measure of milk composition (in collaboration with University of Waikato and Sensortec) |
| May 2005 |
Dairy InSight announces it is reducing funding to $100k and the project is to be wound up – funds are sought internally |
| June 2005 | Herd size is increased to 180, and the herd is moved to seasonal calving |
| September 2005 | “Bruce,” the on-farm fractionation robot, is commissioned and a world-first prototype system for extracting high value proteins from milk on-line is achieved (collaboration with University of Waikato and Sensortec, supported by AGMARDT and FRST) |
| June 2006 | Sensortec Ltd launches “Cellsense®”, the first commercial on-line somatic cell count sensor, developed at the Greenfield site |
| July 2006 | A provisional patent is filed (Method, system and/or apparatus for selecting cows) |
| October 2006 | FRST funding ends; subsequent proposals are unsuccessful |
| April 2007 |
“SMARTY” - an independent pastoral cow traffic control system with the potential to integrate with any brand of robot, goes live |
| May 2007 | Greenfield Farm achieves production equivalent to best practice conventional System 2 farms |
| July 2007 |
A farm systems comparison trial with two independent farmlets, each operated with a dedicated robot, commences |
| August 2008 | The first commercial farm using Lely A3 automatic milking systems is commissioned in Ashburton by Carr Agricultural Group (Stradbrook Robotic Dairy) |
| September 2008 |
A second commercial farm also using Lely A3 robots is launched in Winton, Southland (Overgaauw Robotic Dairy Farm) |
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November 2008 |
DairyNZ announces the closure of the Greenfield site |
