Auto-milking is reducing cow-grazing across EU

Automatic milking has reduced cow grazing on farms that have robot milkers, across Europe.

It is envisaged that up to 20% of cows in Europe will be milked automatically by 2020, and the accompanying decrease in cow grazing is an undesirable trend, say Teagasc researchers at Moorepark, who are studying use of the machines.

They say grass-based systems of animal production are increasingly competitive, have a positive impact on milk quality, reduce the environmental footprint, and improve animal welfare.

Integrating automatic milking with cow grazing is an important topic in the three-year research project at Moorepark.

The machines must work well with grazing, if auto-milking is to become a realistic alternative to conventional, manual milking in Irish grass-based systems, thereby overcoming difficulties in attracting skilled labour, improving farmer lifestyles, and reducing physical work.

Lower labour costs, and higher profitability based on higher milk production (within high input systems), are among the other possible advantages.

At Moorepark, a Merlin 225 AM unit was supplied by Fullwood for research on 70 spring-calved cows of Friesian, Jersey-Friesian cross and Norwegian Red breeds, on a 24ha milking platform.

The maximum distance to the furthest paddock is about 750m.

Grass covers of up to 1,500kg DM/ha are offered — higher covers would discourage cow movement to the milking unit, and may reduce milking frequency.

Cows graze to a post-grazing height of 3.5-4.0cm.

All cows get about 1kg of concentrate/day in the main grazing season.

Yields averaged 4,222 litres and 369kg of milk solids per cow in the 2013 lactation, with 34% first-lactation cows.

The average number of milkings per day was 104, ranging from 70 to 123.

The average milkings/cow per day was 1.8, ranging from 1.6 to 2.1.

An average milk somatic cell count of 152,000 was observed. Average TBC was 10,000.

An experiment last September split cows to be milked into those whose predicted milk yield was 50% and 33%, respectively, of their daily yield.

These milking frequencies were, respectively, 1.4 and 1.9 times per day, but the yields per day didn’t vary significantly between groups.

This study will continue, along with experiments on initiating cow movement to the milking unit, achieving high utilisation of the unit, etc.

Overall, the integrated auto-milking and grazing system operated satisfactorily, said researchers, but significant further research is required.

They said the high capital cost is a major challenge.

But combining automatic milking and cow grazing has potential to reduce labour input; allow management tasks to replace manual labour; allow increased cow numbers on fragmented land bases; and increase knowledge of cow-performance data.

At Moorepark, the infrastructure incorporates a pre-milking waiting and post-milking area.

There are three drafting units, two positioned at the entrance to the dairy, that draft cows to the pre- or post-milking area, depending on readiness for milking. The third is at the dairy exit, and drafts cows to a holding yard or to grazing.