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Deliverable 28 is the nineteeth report published. It is the only deliverable
of workpackage 11 '' Demands and opportunities for operational management
support" and is entitled 'Operational
management on farms with Automatic Milking System'.
This report describes differences between conventional and automatic milking
with respect to operational farm management. From these differences a list of
demands for operational management with automatic milking systems is generated
and compared with the possibilities of currently available systems.
Opportunities and shortcomings are indicated and discussed.
A clear difference with conventional milking is that milking intervals have to
be controlled for individual cows. Feeding strategy is a key element in this,
especially when grazing is applied. Usually cows with too long intervals are
fetched. With regard to health, in general much more indirect information is
available. However, visual inspection of the animals remains an important
method to control health. Because milkings are unattended, regularly
abnormalities have to be checked. This requires specific skills from the
farmer. The automatic milking unit has to be maintained and its cleaning and
functioning must be controlled more or less constantly.
In order to be able to comply with legislation some of the currently existing
regulation must be adapted, avoiding double standards. Farmers must have
affinity with automation. They have to work with secure schedules and respond
as should on alarms for system and animals. In general farmers are satisfied
with the current possibilities of AM systems and do not have a clear view which
further improvements are possible. Despite this, not all of the demands for
automatic milking are yet fulfilled by the current systems but this is also due
to insufficient legislation..
Message date: March 2, 2004
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