Effect of sward height and distance between pasture and barn on cows’ visits to an automatic milking system and other behaviour

Review: Milking robot utilization, a successful precision livestock farming evolution

“…Clark (2013) found the pasture intake of individual animals in pasture-based AMS varies in quality and quantity depending on when a cow enters the pasture allocation, as pasture has been shown to decrease in nutritive value as it is grazed over the duration of its allocation. These findings concur with those of Ketelaar-de Lauwere et al (2000), who found an increased number of visits to the robotic milking unit as pasture mass (and presumably quality) decreased. The consistency of PMR quality compared with the inconsistent characteristics of grazed pasture, is a clear distinction between indoor and pasture-based systems and likely to be a key factor in the larger variability in robot utilization seen in pasture-based AMS farms throughout the day.…”

“…The amount of feed offered is more pertinent to pasture-based AMS compared with indoor AMS, as allocating the correct amount of pasture is crucial to achieving voluntary cow traffic (Kerrisk, 2009). These findings are reinforced by Ketelaar-de Lauwere et al (2000) who showed the number of daily visits to the robotic milking unit to significantly increase from 4.4 to 7.3 visits/day from a high to low pre-grazing sward height, respectively. Dickeson (2010) investigated the impact of 'inaccurate' pasture allocation in pasture-based AMS with two-way grazing, where the proportion of feed offered between the two daily allocations were 50 : 50% for the 'accurate' (or consistent) allocation and 75 : 25% for the 'inaccurate' allocation, with the latter offered in combinations of 75 : 25% and 25 : 75% to achieve the same pasture allowance as 50 : 50% over a 48 h period.…”

“…In these systems, distances of up to 260 m were found to have a slight impact on milk yield and milking frequency, though, Motupalli et al (2014) found evidence contrary to Review: milking robot utilization this, with no decrease in milk yield for pasture-based cows up to 254 m from the dairy. Ketelaar-de Lauwere et al (2000) and Dufrasne et al (2012) found no drop in milking frequency for distances of up to 400 and 450 m, respectively, when combining indoor AMS with grazing. The introduction of AMS into year round pasture-based systems saw distances of 700 m (Greenall et al, 2004) and 900 m (Woolford et al, 2004) being tested.…”

“…As more cows are introduced to an AMS, milking robot utilization naturally increases due to more milkings and feeding events being required to be completed each day (Halachmi et al, 2001). However, a single milking box has a limited capacity of around eight milkings/h ( Ketelaar-de Lauwere et al, 2000;Kerrisk, 2010). Therefore, increasing the number of cows/robot could increase the time cows spend waiting in the pre-milking yard, particularly for low socially ranked or less experience cows (Halachmi, 2009), as this capacity would be exceeded during periods of the day when peak milking activity occurs.…”

Differential response to stocking rates and feeding by two genotypes of Holstein-Friesian cows in a pasture-based automatic milking system

“…In previous studies, the location and amount of partial mixed ration (PMR) (Sporndly and Wredle, 2004), the timing of PMR feeding (Lyons et al, 2013b) or the level of concentrate offered in the AMS (Jago et al, 2007) had little or no effects on the number of milkings/day and milk production. Conversely, the walking distance to pasture and both the size and frequency of pasture breaks/day can change the grazing behavior of cows and the subsequent distribution of milkings at the AMS ( Ketelaar-de Lauwere et al, 2000;Lyons et al, 2013a).…”