Robotic milking of dairy cows: a review

Abstract

Automatic milking systems (AMS) have aroused worldwide interest recently. The first installation was by the company Lely in a project in the Netherlands (its homeland) in 1992. But nowadays, AMS represents a growing reality due to lobby for labor issues, rising costs, difficulty finding well-trained workers, and/ or difficulty keeping people on farms. This work aimed to present a review of the literature on AMS, beginning with a brief history of the evolution of the technology, showing advantages and limitations of its use, and ultimately giving some suggestions. The understanding of the technical functioning and operational running can help farmers and technicians in decision making on the adoption of the new technology. Besides workforce reduction and labor quality promotion, AMS has potential to improve feed conversion to milk, milk quality (with lower SCC), and cow productivity, as well as providing useful data and parameters for better farm management. Potential limitations include high investment costs, changes in milk composition (solids, free fatty acids), and increased risk of ketosis in cows.

Does Small-Scale Livestock Production Use a High Technological Level to Survive? Evidence from Dairy Production in Northeast-ern Michoacán, Mexico

“…Something similar happens with producers with smaller herds and a lower degree of intensification and productivity in Maravatío, because they soon end their activity since they tend to have few animals, which gives them guidelines to dedicate time to various economic activities such as agriculture. Although these results apply to the study area, they do not necessarily indicate that having higher technology cannot have flexibility in the activity, since as reported by Simões et al [ 58 ] and Rodenburg [ 59 ], systems with high technology such as roboticized reduce the workforce in dairy farms of various sizes, making the milking process more efficient and offering a more flexible lifestyle for producers.…”

Impact of the Remoteness of Farms on the use of Robotics in Regional Agriculture

“…штук в 2020 г. (Simões et al, 2020). Высокие темпы внедрения робототехники позволяют заявить о развитии новой промышленной и сельскохозяйственной революции, или Индустрии 4.0 Ozdogane et al, 2017) и 5.0 (Nahavandi, 2019;.…”

Flow systems in robotic milking at Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil

“…Initial studies on the effects of the two aforementioned types of RMS traffic on milk production have demonstrated higher milk production per cow and per robot under free traffic (Tremblay et al, 2016). However, the free system requires greater precision in diet formulation, requiring the use of pelleted concentrates (Simões Filho et al, 2020).…”