Water Consumption in the Automatic Milking Systems

Abstract

The article deals with the determination of water consumption at selected dairy farms during milking using automatic milking systems (AMS). The aim was to determine the water consumption during basic activities associated with the AMS use, namely water for cleaning the milking set and water for cleaning and disinfecting the entire milking system at set daily intervals (hereinafter water). The research was carried out at seven farms in the Czech Republic, which house dairy cows of the black-spotted Holstein cattle. The evaluated groups of dairy cows had from 97 to 103 milked cows for the entire monitored period. Based on the performed measurements, it was found that the average amount of water consumed by AMS per 1 litre of milked milk was 0.33 litres. The results show that water consumption is not completely constant during the year. Multiple factors, including performance, the number of non-drinking milk detections, animal health and current climatic conditions, influence it.

Selected Parameters Affecting the Electricity Consumption of Automatic Milking Systems

“…In contrast to conventional milking methods (Ózsvári and Ivanyos, 2021) -in which the consumption of both electricity and water (Vaculík et al, 2021) is largely affected by the discipline of operators -it is possible to infer that electricity consumption when using AMS is not influenced by operator's activity, but by a number of other factors, which primarily include the management of the herd employed at the given farm, herd milk yield, the number of detections of nonconsumable milk (which is clearly related to the health of animals), current climatic conditions, as well as unwarranted visits to the AMS as reported by Stefanowska et al (1999).…”

“…Analysing the last several decades, the assessment of energy intensity and energy demand of husbandry have become frequently discussed issues (Deming et al, 2013;Hansen et al, 2019;Přikryl et al, 2016). Monitoring and optimizing the operation of individual elements of milking systems, such as monitoring the energy consumption of a pump controlled via a frequency converter during milking cycle, are considered a significant part of a more complex issue (Vaculík et al, 2018).…”

Optimization of the Plate Heat Exchanger Used for Milk Precooling

“…At present, we are facing a lack of water in many places (Trnka et al, 2018). A whole range of scientific papers deals with the issue of water consumption in milk production (Shine et al, 2020;Vaculík et al, 2021). The price of water is gradually increasing and releasing it into waste would be an economic loss, which can be almost as big as the savings in milk cooling.…”

Analysis of Selected Data from Robotic Milking Regarding to Heat Stress of Dairy Cows

“…The temperature humidity index (THI) is frequently used for the purposes of description of heat load. As it takes into account the combined impacts of the air temperature, relative humidity, and water intake, THI represents a very important indicator of the barn environment quality (Herbut, Angrecka and Walczak, 2018;Gantner et al, 2017;Lendelová et al, 2017;Habeeb, Gad and Atta, 2018;Peng et al, 2019;Némethová et al, 2020;Vaculík et al, 2021). Although this model does not take into consideration other environmental factors, i.e., air velocity or solar radiation intensity, the THI model is still considered to be an excellent indicator of stressful climatic conditions (Herbut, Angrecka and Walczak, 2018;Habeeb, Gad and Atta, 2018).…”