The Effect of Two Traffic Situations on the Behavior and Performance of Cows in an Automatic Milking System

Abstract

Two cow traffic situations were tested sequentially in an automatic milking system (AMS) for effects on cow behavior, effective use of the barn, and milking capacity. The first situation was forced cow traffic: 63 cows had to pass through the AMS to go from the lying area to the feeding area. The second was semiforced cow traffic: 67 cows (60 cows from before) had free access to a forage feeding area at one end of the barn but could only access an area with concentrate feeders by passing through the AMS. Behavior of all cows was monitored as well as for two subsets of cows present in both situations: 8 cows with low frequency vs. 7 cows with high frequency of visits to the AMS. In each situation, cows were observed for 72 h. Cow locations and behavior were noted at 10-min intervals for all cows and individually for the selected cows. In semiforced traffic, the herd readily used the freely accessible forage feeding area, ate longer (17.4% of the day vs. 15.1 +/- 0.59%), and stood less in freestalls (9.0 vs. 11.8 +/- 0.30%) than when cow traffic was forced. Nonmilking visits to the AMS tended to decrease, whereas milking visits remained unchanged in the semiforced situation. The subset of cows that visited the AMS more often had fewer nonmilking visits (1.8 vs. 4.2 +/- 0.7) in the semiforced traffic situation whereas cows with low frequency of visits to the AMS had a nonsignificant increase (1.5 vs. 1.0) in nonmilking visits. Cows that visited the AMS frequently used the forage feeding area and the lying area next to it more than low frequency cows and use of those areas increased further during the semiforced situation. The semiforced cow traffic was deemed more desirable than forced cow traffic both for cows and for the capacity of the automatic milking system.

Physiological and behavioural effects of changeover from conventional to automatic milking in dairy cows with and without previous experience

“…Although one cow entered the AMS voluntarily at the first day of milking, the rate of voluntary visits did not achieve levels of more than 90% until d 9 of AMS milking. The rate of voluntary visits dafter successful adaptation to AMS Days in milk Relative milk yield (%) milking corresponds to previous investigations in adapted cows (Winter and Hillerton, 1995;Ketelaarde Lauwere et al, 1998;Hermans et al, 2003;Harms and Wendl, 2004). However, it has to be pointed out that this level was not approached until d 9 of AMS milking.…”

“…Therefore several approaches to attract an AMS visit have been intensively studied (Winter and Hillerton, 1995;Ketelaar-de Lauwere et al, 1998;Hermans et al, 2003;Harms and Wendl, 2004).…”

Effect of lameness on dairy cows’ visits to automatic milking systems

“…However, the effects are likely to be even more severe in dairy farms with an AMS since the success of these systems depends on the cows voluntarily visiting the milking unit a sufficient number of times. A reduction in visits to the milking unit as a result of lameness could be expected to influence feeding frequency (Melin et al 2005), grazing time (Spo¨rndly and Wredle 2004) use of lying stalls (Hermans et al 2003) and milk composition (Nielsen et al 2005), especially where forced traffic is used. Although our sample cows were not a random sample of the herds, we found that about 20% of the cows were slightly or severely lame, which corresponds more-or-less to the estimates of prevalence reported in North American dairy farms (e.g., Espejo et al 2006).…”

Ordenha robotizada de vacas leiteiras: uma revisão

“…O robô deve ser projetado para permitir um tempo ocioso adequado para a limpeza do sistema de um animal para outro visando evitar a contaminação de animal para animal. Salas de espera que possuem saídas podem ser construídas para evitar competição na entrada da ordenha (HeRMans et al, 2003).…”