Automatic milking
Workpackage 11: Demands and opportunities for operational
management support
The dairy industry has to produce milk of indisputable
quality and animal health and welfare have to be at acceptable standards.
Operational management plays a key role to realise this in practise.
Relevant and reliable information is essential to perform this task. In
conventional dairy farming a lot of this information is obtained visually
by the farmer during milking, but this not possible with automatic
milking. Automatic milking however opens possibilities to automatically
monitor parameters during the milking process by using sensors. Farmers
can use the resulting information for decision making in a later stage.
Some decisions however have to be taken immediately and must rely on
sensor-information (for instance milk separation) while others can be
delayed and sensor-information only supports the decision making. Some
control functions probably still have to be based solely on visual
inspection, which has to be carried out regularly. It is not clear at this
stage what information is necessary or useful for the herdsman milking his
cows automatically. The objectives of this work package are:
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To generate a list of demands for operational
management with an automatic milking system relative to conventional
milking
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To compare the possibilities of available automatic
systems with the list of demands
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To signal shortcomings and list possibilities to
overcome these
Methodology and study materials
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The different processes that play a role on a dairy farm
and are relevant with regard to management have already been identified.
However, a description how information is used to manage these processes
is still lacking. A number of work packages concentrate on technical
aspects of milk quality and animal welfare and health respectively. The
progress made until the end of year 2 will enable the participants to
carry out a problem analysis with regard to operational management when
milking with an automatic milking system.
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A session of the workshop at the
end of year 2 will be directed to this subject. Partner 1 will prepare the
session and will also work out the list of demands. Subsequently, ten
farms milking with automatic systems and ten farms milking with
conventional systems in the Netherlands will be visited to improve and
check the adequacy of the list. In an iterative process with all
contributing partners a final list will be made up. Meanwhile, current
possibilities of automatic data collection and data processing of all
commercially available automatic milking systems will be listed. After
completion of the list of demands, possibilities of AM-systems are
compared with the demands. If there are shortcomings, possibilities to
overcome these are suggested.
D28: Report with demands for management information
systems when milking with an automatic system, an overview of
possibilities and shortcomings of current systems, and suggestions to
overcome shortcomings.
