National Research Development Corporation

John A Benson

Michael J Street

Arthur Leonard Wilkin

Paul S Berry

John A Marchant

Michael J Turner

Clive John Allen

Peter J Kettlewell

An arrangement to apply a milking apparatus to the udder of an animal at a milking point including a store for the apparatus, a handling device having an elongate arm to support and move the apparatus between an apparatus acquisition point and the milking point, a stall to define a specific space for an animal to be milked fixedly related to the acquisition point and the milking point, including guides to retain loosely in the space an animal to be milked, sensors to sense retained animal position with respect to the fixedly related space and points and provide a first signal indicative of sensed animal position, pneumatic elements in the device to swing and to longitudinally displace the elongate arm to move and position the elongate arm and any supported apparatus, and control circuitry to control the pneumatic elements to operate the arm to acquire milking apparatus at a position forward of the teats of a retained animal, the control circuitry being responsive to the first signal to move the acquired apparatus rearwardly under the animal to the milking point for application to a respective teat of a retained animal, the arrangement further including in association with the acquired apparatus localized teat sensors to provide a second signal indicative of sensed teat position relative to the acquired apparatus, the control circuitry being responsive also to the second signal to control the pneumatic elements for application of the acquired apparatus to a respective teat, the movement of the arm by the response of the control circuitry to the second signal being localized with respect to the response to the first signal to enable a teat cup of the apparatus to be applied to a teat.

Automatic milking of animals

A broiler harvester 10 (FIG. 1a) comprises contra-rotating pick-up rotors 12, 13 and a third pick-up rotor 14 arranged in front of and co-operating with the other two rotors in a triangular formation. In operation the rotors 12, 13 discharge the broilers on to a conveyor belt 18 which in turn discharges them on to a turntable 32 where they remain until removed for packing into crates etc. The support frame 20 for belt 18 is able to scan back and forth around an arc to accelerate the harvesting operation, the front rotor 14 at all times being rotated in the direction of the scan.

Poultry-harvesting assembly

Growing community of inventors

Wootton, United Kingdom

John A Benson