00:02Up and moving at Moriarty in Tasmania's north-west.
00:06These cows are on their way to get milked.
00:09High-tech collars signalling virtual fences reveal the way.
00:14Grain at the dairy gives the cows an incentive to keep moving.
00:18The cows are taken to a paddock outside the dairy.
00:21The cows just do their own thing from there on.
00:23At the shed, robots take over.
00:29Without a farmer in sight, milking begins.
00:33Simon Badcock keeps an eye on things remotely via a phone app.
00:37Because we're pushing it to its limits with nearly 100 cows per robot,
00:43we can't have too much time with the robots being down.
00:46So we come during the night, once a week.
00:48For this dairy farming family, the technology is transforming daily life.
00:53For family farms especially, it's the way to go.
00:58It means that you can have a family life and stay in the industry.
01:03Virtual fencing collars use a combination of sounds,
01:06vibration and mild electric shocks to control livestock.
01:11Dr Megan Verdon has led research into how they affect animal welfare.
01:15She's keen for research into the combination of collars and robotic dairies.
01:20Any system has trade-offs.
01:23That system works with the cows by bringing them all in as a mob,
01:27but the cow's not choosing when she's milked,
01:29which is where these robot systems were kind of developed.
01:32Dr Verdon believes animals will always need humans.
01:36What we're doing though is removing a variable, which is the human,
01:41from the milking process.
01:43And whether that is a good or a bad thing for the animal
01:46will probably depend on who the human you're removing is.
01:50Holter collars are approved for use,
01:52and used in nearly every Australian state and territory.
01:55But this part of Tasmania is the only place where the collars are being used
02:00in combination with robotic milking systems.
02:03On a path to new ways of farming.
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