March 29, 2024

Robotic milking systems give cows behavior freedom

FORT ATKINSON, Wis. — Dairy cows milked with robotic systems have more behavior freedom and as a result there’s a potential for better health and milk production.

“The key is voluntary milking which allows the cows to milk when they want to,” said Trevor DeVries, professor at the University of Guelph and Canada Research Chair in Dairy Cattle Behavior and Welfare.

“We’d like that to happen on a regular interval,” said DeVries during a webinar hosted by Hoard’s Dairyman. “We want that to match other aspects of her time budget, as well, so the cow can eat, drink and lie down when she wants to.”

However, the professor said, the benefits may not always be realized.

DeVries recently completed a large study in Canada where 200 farms were surveyed and the researchers benchmarked all the production and health data for one and a half years.

“Cows may not milk when they want to because they can’t get to the robot,” he said. “A lot of things influence that and the biggest thing is the design and management of the facilities.”

There are many ways to design robotic milking facilities — retrofit existing facilities, build new facilities or set up robots in pens in different configurations.

“From my perspective, the cow traffic has the biggest effect on voluntary milking,” DeVries said. “We see a difference in cow behavior between free and guided traffic systems.”

In a study of 75 farms, the majority had free traffic with less than 15% using a guided traffic system.

“There was a higher milking frequency on farms with free traffic coupled with more feed bunk visits, as well,” DeVries said.

“We saw an improvement in milk yield with greater frequency of milking visits per day, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get good milk visits from guided system barns, but it probably takes a higher level of management to achieve a similar level of production as free traffic,” he said.

For stocking density, a lot of dairymen are in the 50- to 55-cow range per robot.

“Above that it becomes more challenging to manage the cows well,” DeVries said. “If we’re going to push a higher number of cows per robot unit, we need to make sure everything else is managed very well so we don’t lose milking frequency and milk yield.”

The amount of bunk space is still important in robotic systems.

“Cows spend from four to five hours a day eating and 11 to 12 hours per day lying down,” DeVries said. “When we change their eating or lying behavior, we see production effects.”

In the Canadian study, there was 25 inches per cow for feed bunk space.

“We saw 2.5 pounds difference in milk yield based on the amount of bunk space available,” the professor said. “We need to make sure environments are comfortable and cows can get to the resources they want to in order to optimize their behavior and maximize their production.”

Mobility is the biggest contributor for cows that don’t want to go to the robot, DeVries said.

“A lame cow has pain often in her hoof or somewhere in her leg which restricts her desire to milk voluntarily,” DeVries said.

“When a cow is lame, she has pain that will restrict her movement and is less willing to get up and go to the robot so we see lame cows are 2.2 times more likely to be fetched for milking,” he said. “Lame cows had 0.3 less milkings per day and as a result they produced less milk.”

Management that dairymen know with conventional systems translates to robot barns for foot health and mobility, DeVries said.

“There is less lameness for farms that had wider stalls, stalls with more lunge space, deep sand bedding and lesser stocking density,” he said, “as well as the amount of bunk space so the cows were able to eat when they want which limits the time they are standing around waiting for access to feed.”

For udder health and management, DeVries said, the milking procedure with a robotic system can be a lot better from a consistency standpoint.

“We don’t see prolonged negative effects with robots,” DeVries said.

“From an environmental standpoint, we need to make sure we keep these cows as clean as possible,” he said. “When a cow goes into a robot with a dirty udder, that robot isn’t going to differentiate that dirty udder from a cleaner one.”

Bedding management is very important for udder health.

“Sand is king not only from a comfort perspective, but also in terms of maintaining good udder health as long as the sand is kept well maintained,” DeVries said.

“One of opportunities for udder health management in robotic milking is the risk of over milking individual quarters is potentially decreased,” the professor said.

“We can probably do a better job of drying off cows with robots,” he said. “Getting cows’ milk production down prior to dryoff is important to minimize the risk of udder engorgement in those early days post dryoff and it also reduces the risk of early dry period udder infection events.”

Nutrition plays a critical role for stimulating voluntary milking for cows in robotic systems, DeVries said.

“It’s not just the feed we provide in the robot, we also know the eating behavior of cows at the feed bunk plays a big role in voluntary milking of cows,” the professor said.

“This study shows a feeding response in cows when we deliver fresh feed and we also see a milking response,” he said. “When there’s a peak in eating activity, we also see a peak in milking activity and we see some smaller peaks with feed push-up, as well.”

To maximize the efficiency of the milking unit and optimize the behavior of cows, DeVries said, the goal is to get cows to spread out their milking evenly across the 24-hour period.

“Then there will be less periods of time when the cows are standing and waiting for access to the robot,” DeVries said.

“We have an opportunity with robots to do a better job of meeting individual cow production needs and to push production on the highest production cows with supplementation of concentrate to cows in the robot,” he said. “There are challenges with this so there is more research to do there.”

Martha Blum

Martha Blum

Field Editor