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Automatic Milking Systems: The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Automatic Milking

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1. The automatic milking system Automatic milking, also called Automatic milking system (AMS), is the milking of dairy cattle without human labor. They have been commercially available since the 1990s. Since the 1970s, there has been a lot of research into how to facilitate the milking of dairy cattle, by reducing the necessary human labor, the cost, the time, and the hygiene of milking. The basis of milking is to extract milk from the animals and it is favorable to do this in such a way to maintain the lactation period for around 300 days. This is obtained by consistent milking intervals, usually twice daily, all activities therefore need to be scheduled around the milking process of the specific farm. AMS and voluntary milking allows for the cow to decide her own milking time and interval, rather than being milked as part of a group at set …show more content…

Advantages of the use of milking robots: 1. The elimination of manual labor – as I mentioned earlier, the farmer only needs to attend the animals for inspection, supervision, feeding etc. The robot takes care of the milking process. 2. Milking consistency – the milking process is always consistent, for every single cow, and every visit. Also, it reduces the frequency of teat injury as each four, separate milking cups are removed individually, so that none of the empty quarters stay attached while the other three are finished. Some of the newer models are also able to vary the pulsation rate and level based on the milk flow of each quarter, of each individual cow. 3. It increases the milking frequency – it is increased to around 2,5 times per day per cow. Which results in less stress on the udder and increases the comfort of the cow. It also increases the milking frequency and increases the amount of milk yield per cow. But the milk usually increases in water and not solids. 4. Causes lower environmental stress – it is documented that cows that can selected themselves when they want to get milked are less

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