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Abstract

The welfare of dairy cows depends on several factors related to social interaction between cows, the management and the environmental conditions. In addition to milking, cow traffic systems and feeding are important issues. While free cow traffic gives most freedom to the cows, long and irregular milking intervals among individual cows counteract the success. Forced traffic results often in unsatisfactory queuing in front of the milking unit (MU) and too few feeding visits. Controlled traffic, which allows access to some basic feeds between milkings without passing the MU, results in better overall welfare conditions. The cows' interest to go to the waiting area in front of the MU depends on the time since last feeding and the number of cows already in the waiting area. Low-ranked cows have to wait longer than the high-ranked when queuing, and generally choose time periods when the high ranked are less active. Although there are small possibilities for them to act voluntarily and in a synchronised way, they cope well with the environment, and studies on stress-related hormones did not revile that they suffer. However, differences in the ability of individual cows, independent of ranking order, to adjust to different degree of guiding calls for management systems with possibilities of individual settings. A concept for assessing animal welfare at herd level has been developed as a tool for the AM-herd, including information on the systems, systems application, animal behaviour and animal health status. The concept has been applied on 8 AM-herds during a year. Each herd received an annual report, which were discussed at the farm. The report included a short overview, a list of indicator values with reference to other results from other farms, and a detailed documentation of raw data from the farm. Major herd differences were found for many indicators emphasising the management impact on animal welfare. The farmers in general appreciated the system as a relevant decision support system.

Published in

Title: Automatic milking, a better understanding
Publisher: Wageningen Academic Publishers

Conference

Automatic milking - A better understanding

SLU Authors

UKÄ Subject classification

Animal and Dairy Science

Publication identifier

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.3920/9789086865253_083
  • ISBN: 9076998388

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/3947