AN overcast Friday morning was not enough to dampen spirits and keep people away from the 2012 Dairy Innovation Day run by Dairy Australia and Western Dairy last week.
Hosted by the Hayes family at Cookernup, the day saw 300 people turn up with a number of key speakers and a robotic milking display keeping everyone entertained.
The day opened with Western Dairy chair Dale Hanks introducing "The Mooin' Transfer" a program aimed at school students as part of the Cows Create Careers program.
The program saw three students from Busselton's Cornerstone Christian College travel to Gippsland, Victoria, to represent WA in a school competition for the best pitch, aimed at convincing consumers to pay three dollars a litre for milk.
The day was then officially opened by Dairy Australia managing director Ian Halliday, who also used the opportunity to launch the effluent code of practice, describing the best practice the industry aspires to for managing effluent.
The day continued with the next generation of dairy farmers, Ben and Chris Hayes, interviewed on stage by Department of Agriculture and Food (DAFWA) dairy team leader John Lucey.
This helped give an insight into the innovation, challenges and opportunities that are part and parcel of the Hayes' family dairy enterprise.
Ben and Chris highlighted the benefits of farming with family and the lifestyle dairy farming offers, over the cash incentives available in the mining industry.
Chris Hayes believed one of the largest issues the industry faced was the importance of finding good labour.
He spoke on how moving towards a more automated dairy business may help overcome some of the labour shortage issues the industry was facing, as well as offering dairy farmers a better lifestyle.
Narrikup dairy framer Bevan Ravenhill then spoke on the planning, installation and commissioning of robots on commercial dairy farms in Australia.
After morning tea, attendees were then split into three groups and wandered between different stations.
The first group took the chance to see dairy company DeLaval's working demonstration of automated milking technology, with the Voluntary Milking System robot on show.
The second group was invited to take a walk to the Hayes' irrigation paddock via the effluent pond for a quick inspection of a best practise effluent system.
Gippsland-based dairy consultant Frank Tyndall then gave a rundown of the pasture pilot tracker, a system of benchmarking the performance of a farm's feed base, that allows you to track your pasture performance.
Mr Tyndall's presentation was quickly followed by DAFWA's Dr Martin Staines who spoke on the importance of rumen health in dairy cattle.
Mr Staines explained to farmers how maintaining the optimum health of rumen in cows would lead to better performance and healthier dairy cows.
While this was going on, the third group was invited to listen to a presentation by Nuffield scholar Ed Cox and Quality Silage Systems silage and ruminant specialist Trevor Schoorl.
Mr Schoorl spoke on the key indicators of optimising silage quality and performance and the importance of packing silage correctly to ensure quality was maintained.
