Estimating efficiency in automatic milking systems

Automatic Milking Systems (AMS), also known as robotic milking, are internationally accepted as a valid alternative to conventional milking parlour, and also as an advanced mean for dairy farm management. The continuous growth of labour and production costs are leading to the development of new improved AMS machines, especially for heaviest milking operations. Accordingly, AMS presence in European dairy farms is expected to continuously grow in the near future. AMS reduces heavy workload and allows milking frequency monitoring of each cow, based on its production level or lactation stage, without any additional labour cost. In this study, milking data of 15 dairy farms located in the Veneto region (North-Eastern Italy) were analyzed with the aim to estimate the Automatic Milking Systems performances, and eventually recognize operative limits and bottlenecks. Results are also of interest to allow definition of relations between the AMS capacity and milking time, which is useful to optimize operations and increase profitability. In particular, data relative to milk yield, daily milking sessions per cow, effective milking time, rejected milking time, cleaning time and machine downtime have been collected and used to evaluate the operative performance of each farm. Specifically, the analysis highlighted an average of 17 h.day-1 of milking activity, 5.6 h.day-1 of inactivity and 1.4 h.day-1 for cleaning and self-diagnosis. Additionally, 40 % of the AMS reported the use for milking activities lower than 16 h.day-1 with idle periods exceeding in some cases 7-8 h.day-1.