Milking parlour pulsators tend to be high-maintenance items, but a Kent dairy farmer believes he has found a simpler alternative. David Cousins reports.

Finding the best machine on the market is never easy, whether it’s a combine or a cattle crush. But when dairy farmer Peter Joules decided to put in a new milking parlour at PHR Farms at Brabourne near Ashford, he thought some serious research was needed.

The existing 24 x 48 parlour used to milk the farm’s 700 cows was in need of replacement and he had decided that a rotary unit would give the best throughput for the least manpower. However, the range of makes on offer makes the choice difficult and the huge investment involved means it’s not a decision you want to get wrong.

In the end, he decided the best way to seek out the best and most reliable machine on the market was to get on a plane. In January 2009, he flew to New Zealand and spent three weeks driving around both the North and South Island, knocking on the door of any farm where he thought a rotary parlour was being used. At each farm, he quizzed the farmer about the good and bad points of their rotaries.

“We visited 60 farms in all, with the biggest of them a 12,500-cow unit,” he says. “We had a good welcome at every place.”

One of the manufacturer names that came up time and time again as a well-made unit was an old-established New Zealand firm called Read Industries. It’s not a make that is currently sold in the UK, though there’s one Read herringbone parlour in Ireland.

So impressed was Mr Joules with the design and build quality of the Read parlour that he bought a 70-point unit and had it shipped over to the UK. All the equipment was put into half a container that arrived in the UK in January 2011, though the platform was built in the UK.

The build was completed the week before Christmas 2011. It’s a no-frills spec, he says, with no milk-recording equipment or automatic cluster removal units. So cost is a reasonable-sounding £500,000, including the building that it is housed in.

However, Mr joules says the quality of the components on the new parlour is as good as anything on the market and the simple-but-thoughtful design should ensure a long life.

Slide pulsator

What particularly caught his eye was the simplicity and low maintenance of the Read slide pulsator, which he is now marketing to UK farmers.

Conventional pulsators use a diaphragm to provide the on-off vacuum that allows the cows to be milked. There’s one on each cluster and they are one of the milking parlour items that needs the most maintenance. Most have to be serviced every six months and the diaphragm replaced every 12 months.

However, the Read pulsator uses a much simpler system, with a plastic slide that moves back and forward to give the vacuum pulses.

“These never need to be serviced,” says Mr Joules. “You just give them a squirt of silicon in the slide once in a while and that’s it.”

They are available in 4+0 and 2+2 configuration for both herringbone and rotary parlours and come in three pipe sizes: 2in, 2.5in and 3in.

The entire pulsation for a parlour is run from one electric motor, minimising the risk of breakdowns, and there are no valves or seals involved.

The pulsator is driven by a simple series of rods, interlinked by joints, all of which can easily be replaced should they break (which is very unlikely).

The slide pulsator can be flushed with wash water and is unaffected by variations in temperature or vacuum level. With large porting on the pulsator, there are also unlikely to be blockages from foreign objects that might get sucked into the air-lines.

• Mr Joules can be contacted at phrfarms@o2.co.uk