Robotic milking is becoming popular on dairy farms. The University of Minnesota Extension team reported that the top three reasons for installing a milking robot were improved lifestyle, reduced hired labor and the ability to grow without additional hired labor.
Along with feeding the cows, cleaning the facilities and taking care of cow’s health and reproduction, fetching cows is one of the main tasks on robotic dairies. It has been reported, on average, 8% of the cows must be fetched to the robots, and dairy workers spend 51 minutes per day per robot fetching cows.
Canadian researchers observed lame cows were 2.2 times more likely to be fetched than non-lame cows. Using a locomotion score on a 5-point numerical rating system (1 = sound to 5 = extremely lame), the researchers (King et al., 2017) compared 353 lame (score ≥ 3) with 865 non-lame cows (score < 3) from 41 Canadian farms. As expected, lame cows produced 3.5 lb. per day less milk, and had 0.3 fewer milkings per day.
In previous work conducted at the same dairies, these authors (King et al., 2016) assessed the effect of herd-level factors on the prevalence of lameness. The researchers collected milking data for all cows on each farm, and individually scored 30 cows per farm using the 5-point locomotion score. Across farms, the mean herd-level prevalence of clinical and severe lameness were 26% and 2.2%, respectively.
Continue reading this article published in Milk.
