Automatic fetching technologies on the horizon may allow farmers with automatic milking systems (AMS) to increase the number of milkings that occur overnight.
FutureDairy Project Leader, Associate Professor Kendra Kerrisk, said that Australia’s grazing-based AMS usually saw a dip in the number of milkings between 2am and 5am, a time when grazing cows typically rest.
Post graduate student, Ashleigh Wildridge, simulated auto fetching to determine the likely impact on overnight milkings and therefore the potential value of automatic fetching technologies for AMS farms.
The study was conducted on Grant and Leesa Williams’ automatic milking farm at Hallora in West Gippsland, where four AMS box units milk 250 cows.
Conducted over three weeks, the study involved two different fetching times: 11pm and 1am.
Ms Wildridge visited a paddock of cows due for milking, quietly moved them into the laneway and shut the gate. She was then able to track their milking times through data recorded by the AMS.
“I wanted to find out whether the cows would take themselves up to the dairy to be milked or if they’d just hang around in the laneway; and if the time of fetching made any difference,” Ms Wildridge said.
“Most of the cows did in fact continue from the laneway up to the dairy to be milked. And the time of fetching didn’t make much difference.”
In the trial, the number of cows with a milking interval of more than 16 hours decreased from 4.6 per cent of the herd to 1.7pc.
This has two benefits: it reduces the risk of udder health issues such as mastitis and increases the potential number of cows milked per robot.
Ms Wildridge said accurate pasture allocation was still the most important tool for encouraging voluntary cow movement in a grazing based AMS.
“Auto-fetching technology may be an additional tool to enhance voluntary cow movement but accurate pasture allocation will continue to be critical, “she said.
“For example, if too much pasture were allocated, the cows’ response to auto-fetching would differ; we’d expect them to be more likely to loiter or rest in the laneway.”
Products that could potentially be used to automatically fetch dairy cows from a paddock include:
- Fence walkers: A robotic system that moves an electrified wire - Virtual fencing: Under development by CSIRO, the system would fit cows with collars with GPS receivers that emit a noise warning and then a small shock when cattle approach the boundary line
- Robotic herder: Under development at the University of Sydney, an un-manned vehicle can be set to calmly move behind cattle and herd them out of the paddock.