Fernando Diaz
A shortage of labor available for working in agriculture coupled with a rapid advance in robotic and automation technology has increased the implementation of robotic milking on dairy farms.
A study published in the Journal of Dairy Science evaluated milk performance on automatic milking systems in North American dairy farms.
The researchers (Tremblay et al., 2016) identified risk factors associated with daily milk production at 635 dairy farms with robotic milking. This included 54,065 observations.
In summary, these factors were the most important:
- Traffic type: Free traffic daily produced 2.4 lb. more per cow (148 lb. per robot) than forced traffic.
- Robots per pen: Two robots per pen (120 cows) had greater daily milk production per robot compared with one robot per pen (60 cows).
- Feed offering: A higher offering of concentrates in the robot was associated with lower milk production.
Continue reading this article published in Milk.
