A new automated feeding system for ruminants is coming to Canada, adding another competitor to the popular dairy autonomous feeding segment.
Lucas G is an automated system from France that started out feeding goats and now also feeds dairy cattle.
Why it matters
Automated feeding helps reduce the workload on dairy farms in Canada, while adding more frequent feedings, which can increase feed consumption and milk production.
The automated feeding market is changing quickly in Canada, with some companies leaving the market, but news players coming in to serve it.
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Enzo Beduz, the sales area manager for Canada and the U.S. for Lucas G moved to Quebec last year. The founder of the company recently moved to Ontario.
“It’s been about eight or nine years we have been producing that robot in Europe and now we’re trying to get it into the market in Canada,” he said at the Ottawa Valley Farm Show where dealer DMD Enterprises, a DeLaval dealer in Eastern Ontario is working to introduce the product to that area.
In Europe, DeLaval sells the Lucas G in DeLaval colours, but the same arrangement isn’t happening in Canada, so Lucas G decided to bring it here in its own signature bright yellow colour.
The company’s feed kitchen concept allows many different inputs to be mixed and fed to cattle.
It can take any type of feed, liquid, solid silage, round bale, square bales, put the feed that needs processing through shredders and then it can be added to a stationary mixer.
That mixer then moves the feed to the company’s I-Ron automated feeding system delivery cart.
The electric feeding cart moves around the barn, dispensing and pushing up feed where needed.
The feeding cart charges as it is being loaded, so it can run 21 hours per day.
The cart isn’t a mixer, like the Lely Vector, he says, but will distribute other inputs, like minerals specific to certain groups, on top of the total mixed ration it’s delivering. It’s also a feed pusher, so can run to push feed without delivering new feed.
The system follows a line cut into the concrete, with RFID points, so there’s no rail to worry about and “it doesn’t get lost” says Beduz.
One of the carts can feed about 500 cows, but the system is set up so that the background kitchen can be expanded to handle a second cart, for up to 1,000 cows fed.
Beduz says the company has some of its systems operating in Finland and Sweden, so has experience with cold and snow.
The system was first designed for goats.
“They are also harder to handle than cows, so after that, we were pretty much good to go” for feeding cows too, he says.
In addition to DMD Enterprises, current dealers are M&S Ag services in Saskatchewan, Agrileader in western Quebec and Les Équipements Laitiers LCB Inc. in southern Quebec. Beduz says the company is in discussions with other dealers and expects to announce more soon.