Smart tech powers dairy production in northwest China

YINCHUAN, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- Inside a farm in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, three predominantly white, robust cows stand out for being cloned.

"The three were born just before the 2023 Spring Festival. They are very healthy and have reached the expected weight," said Wang Bingke, a doctoral student of veterinary medicine at Northwest A&F University.

Around 70 percent of China's high-quality dairy cattle breeds are imported, Wang said, noting that when his research team discovered a high-yield Holstein cow producing over 18 tonnes of milk annually, they knew they had struck gold. The cow became the donor for the three cloned calves now being raised on the farm of Ningxia Saishang Muyuan Animal Husbandry Co., Ltd. in the city of Lingwu.

"This breakthrough can promote the regeneration and expansion of super dairy cows, creating a high-yield breeding population while reducing dependence on imported breeds," Wang said.

Ningxia boasts a latitude of 38 degrees north, known as the golden milk source belt where the climatic conditions are very suitable for the growth of dairy cows.

By breeding high-quality cattle, standardizing large-scale farming and establishing premium forage bases, the region's dairy industry is advancing toward higher-end, green and more intelligent development.

In addition to the cloned cows, Saishang Muyuan owns a high-tech milking carousel, where hundreds of black-and-white cows step on, complete the milking process in one rotation, and step off in an orderly sequence.

"We have two state-of-the-art BouMatic carousel milking systems, each with 80 stations, completing a rotation in an average of 2 minutes and 45 seconds," said Zhou Shuai, farm manager at Saishang Muyuan.

"Each cow on the carousel is automatically identified by its ID code, and the milk yield per session and cumulative daily yield are displayed on a computer screen in different colors," he added.

In 2023, Ningxia had 920,000 dairy cows, producing 4.3 million tonnes of fresh milk, making it a key base for premium milk and high-end dairy products in China.

With the high-quality development of Ningxia's dairy industry, the region aims to have 1.1 million dairy cows and produce 5.5 million tonnes of fresh milk by 2025, achieving a total industrial chain output value of 100 billion yuan (14 billion U.S. dollars).

Chinese dairy giant Mengniu Dairy, leveraging local resources, partnered with authorities in Ningxia's Yinchuan and Lingwu cities to build the world's largest liquid milk factory.

Once full-scale production begins, the factory will operate 24 advanced high-speed production lines, producing 1 million tonnes of milk annually, all managed by a staff of just 100.

Visitors to the factory can view the entire production line through glass walls, witnessing an operation defined by efficiency. Gleaming silver pipelines and swiftly moving production lines work seamlessly, with robots and mechanical arms filling, packing, sealing and transporting products, all with minimal human presence in the vast production hall -- no wastage, just precision in motion.

The factory operates under a full automation system that can be initiated with a single click by one person in the control room, said Yuan Jiuzheng, director of intelligent manufacturing at Mengniu Dairy. "It's like giving the factory a smart brain."