Associations between milking technology, herd size and milk production parameters on commercial dairy cattle farms

Abstract

The aim of the study was to survey the milking technology and to analyse the associations between milking parlour type, herd size, and milk production parameters on dairy cattle farms. The milking technology was surveyed by using a questionnaire in 417 Hungarian dairy herds with 177,514 cows in 2017, and it was compared with their official farm milk production data. The surveyed farms were categorized according to their size (1-50, 51-300, 301-600, and >600 cows) and to their milking parlour types (herringbone, parallel, carousel, and others). The relationships were analysed by multivariate linear models, one-way ANOVA, and Fisher’s exact test. Pairwise comparisons were performed by Tukey’s post hoc tests. The prevailing type of milking parlour was herringbone (71.0 %), but on larger farms the occurrence of parallel and carousel parlours increased (p<0.001). The number of milking stalls per farm increased with herd size (p<0.001). Farms with herringbone parlour had significantly smaller number of milking stalls than that of parallel (p=0.022) and carousel (p<0.001) parlours, and the cows were mostly milked two times, while in carousel milking parlours mostly three times a day. As the herd size increased, so did daily milk yield (p<0.001) and daily milk production per cow (p<0.001). Herd size was associated with somatic cell count (p<0.001). The type of milking parlour showed significant association with daily milk yield (p=0.039) and dairy units with herringbone milking system had the lowest milk quality. Our findings show that herd size has greater impact on milk production parameters than milking technologies.

Milking practices on commercial Holstein-Friesian farms

“…The prevailing loose housing dairy farms mostly used two technologies: herringbone and rotary milking parlors (Priekulis and Kurgs, 2010). Nevertheless, in Hungary, the most commonly used type of milking parlors was the herringbone (71.0%), followed by the parallel (14.9%), rotary (9.6%), and others (4.6%) (Ivanyos et al, 2020), which distribution was found by this study, as well.…”

“…Nipers et al (2016) recommended a separate parlor for 200 cows. However, the Hungarian farms with a smaller number of cows had already used separate milking parlors (Ivanyos et al, 2020). The prevailing loose housing dairy farms mostly used two technologies: herringbone and rotary milking parlors (Priekulis and Kurgs, 2010).…”

“…According to Wall and McFadden (2008), increased milking frequency does not adversely affect the health and reproductive performance of cows and can, therefore, be considered as a potentially profitable technology. The number of daily milkings increased with herd size; thus, 60.0% of the farms with more than 600 cows milked the cows three or four times a day (Ivanyos et al, 2020). With proper milking technology and routine, three milkings a day could result in higher milk production and smaller incidence of mastitis, but the operating costs are usually higher, which could finally decrease the farm's profitability.…”

Effect of various milking equipment on milk ejection in high-yielding cows

“…First of all, the milk ejection rate is the most vital sign of cows' suitability for machine milking, which depends on several factors: reflex perception of machine milking, hormonal regulation of milk ejection, udder morphology, type of highest nervous activity, and others. The rate of milk ejection indicates not so much the time of milking animals, as the prerequisites for a positive reflex perception of milking, easy filling udder with milk before milking, as well as readiness for repeated milking with a high shutdown threshold of milking machine (Ivanyos et al, 2020;Mantysaari et al 2019;Palii et al, 2020b).…”

“…Thus, the intensity of milk ejection determines the cost of labor and time to obtain one quintal of milk. Therefore, this indicator's improvement provides a tremendous economic effect (Ivanyos et al, 2020). It is necessary to select an equivalent milk ejection reflex to remove a significant portion of the produced milk from the animal's udder.…”