Authors: H.J.C. van Dooren, L.F.M. Heutinck, G. Biewenga, L. Munksgaard, C.C. Krohn, E. Spörndly, E. Wredle, H. Wiktorsson
Recent research on how to combine automatic milking (AM) systems and grazing
is presented with the objective to summarise the results obtained in an EU-project
and discuss these results in relation to present knowledge in the field.
Experiments with 24-hour grazing conducted in Sweden showed no difference in
water intake between cows with drinking water indoors, and cows with water both
in- and outdoors. Ad libitum supply of silage did not increase milk yield or
lower milking interval compared with 3 kg dry matter*cow-1*day-1.
Free cow traffic (access to feed supplements) gave a significantly lower number
of voluntary milkings compared with controlled access. Grazing near the barn
(50m) gave a higher milk yield compared with grazing at a longer distance
(260m).
Dutch surveys and on-farm studies on AM-farms with grazing showed that
selection gates contributed to a lower number of manually fetched animals. In
an experiment, the effect of pasture distance (<150m versus >500m) and
supplementation level (6 versus 10 kg DM) on milking interval, pasturing time
and milk yield was studied. No significant effects of distance or level of
roughage supplements on milk yield and milking interval were observed.
Case studies on farms in Denmark showed that a relatively high milking
frequency was obtained (variation 2.1- 3.0) but most cows had to be fetched
from the pasture. In periods when many cows were at pasture a decrease in
number of milkings per hour often occurred. Cow behaviour was more synchronised
at pasture than when in the barn, and only few cows entered the barn alone.
In conclusion automatic milking can successfully be combined with pasture and
grazing. High levels of supplementary feeding did not lead to higher production
when pasture was available in sufficient amounts but supplementation can be
used strategically as a management tool to obtain smooth cow traffic.
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© Animal Sciences Group -
Wageningen UR. Last update:
20-02-2008 10:03. |
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