Watch: Lely Exos in motion on Dutch dairy farm

The Lely Exos is the primary autonomous machine that may harvest and feed grass to cows on farms as much as 24 hours/day.

Grass performs an important position on most Irish dairy farms, however it additionally has a more and more necessary position on many farms on mainland Europe.

Though cows in a few of these nations do get out to graze, the feeding of recent grass within the shed is the place most of grass consumption occurs.

Which means on many farms you will notice a tractor with a entrance mower and a silage wagon behind.

However Lely has developed a totally autonomous machine that completes the job for farmers.

The Lely Exos can minimize, accumulate, after which feed grass to cows.

There are at the moment 13 machines in operation within the Netherlands, with an extra 10 to be in operation by the top of the yr.

Is it anticipated that the primary of those automobiles shall be operational in Eire in late-2024 or early 2025.

Lely Exos

The Exos is a four-wheel drive and steer, totally electrical automobile. It has a 2m reducing width, works 24 hours/day, has a weight of three.4t and may maintain 1t of recent weight grass.

It makes use of a double-knife cutter bar. That is used for its actual reducing, has low energy requirement and may be very compact.

On common it takes the machine about two hours for it minimize, feed and cost – which means that it may well harvest 12 hundreds/day. This two-hour cycle use 4-5kWh.

The machine goes to the chosen discipline, cuts the chosen quantity after which feeds the grass evenly within the shed to the cows.

A conveyor is used to maneuver the grass into the storage space or bunker, then as soon as a pile is fashioned the ground strikes and extra grass can enter.

A significant focus of the design is to forestall harm occurring to the grass, with the purpose to get grass in entrance of the cows with out it being broken.

The Exos is a part of Lely’s circular-farming mannequin, because it is ready to unfold liquid or granulated fertiliser after mowing.

On farms the place the Lely Sphere is in place, the liquid fertiliser from the Sphere might be unfold from the machine.

The machine can also be in touch with a Lely Vector or Juno which can be positioned on a farm to make sure that they work collectively and keep away from any potential collision.

Being an autonomous automobile implies that the machine is regularly studying and may detect modifications to the yard or its path.

It may detect objects in entrance and behind to make sure that it doesn’t hit or crash into them.

The machine works off a administration system, the place the farmer selects the quantity of grass they wish to be harvested, in what number of feeds, and the way a lot nitrogen is unfold afterwards.

A playlist might be created to pick out the fields that shall be mown and the mowing sample that the Exos ought to observe.

The machine has 24 hours distant monitoring from Lely; a lot of the present points are being solved by the distant staff.

Solely when there is a matter that requires the farmer will they be notified.

In accordance with the Lely staff, this is likely one of the areas that farmers utilizing the machine like probably the most, as their intervention with the machine is low.

On farm

The Exos has been in use on the Blokland farm since 2018; it was the second take a look at farm for the Exos.

It has entry to 40ha and on common harvests 1,300,000kg of grass/yr, working on the farm from April to November, or for round 223 days.

There are 180 milking cows on the farm, milked by three Lely Astronauts; the farm additionally has a Vector feeding system.

The Exos and Vector are linked collectively on this farm to make sure that feeding is maximised and to cease the 2 machines from working within the shed on the similar time.