Fifth deliverable out now

The fifth deliverable of the project is the first deliverable of work package four, 'Milk quality on farms with an automatic milking system'. Its title is 'Effect of automatic milking on the quality of produced milk'.

The most important result is that milk quality deteriorated slightly after the introduction of the automatic milking system. This decrease in quality was most profound in the first 6 months after introduction. However, the levels were still far below penalty limits. After this period, most levels improved again and stabilised. Furthermore, it appeared that farms switching to automatic milking more recently had better average milk quality when compared to farms that switched to automatic milking already some years ago. Apparently, experience gained by both farmers and industry has contributed to this improvement.

Message date: April 4, 2002