Robotic Milking: Routine Flexibility

Margaret Quaassdorff, Dairy Management Specialist, Northwest NY Dairy, Livestock, and Field Crops Team

Robotic milking is a growing management style on New York's dairies with over 60 robotic dairies across the state. Proper facility design, and managing cows in a way that takes cow behavior into consideration has helped to decrease the amount of labor needed on these farms. In addition, the type of work and way that it is performed can differ from that of a conventional dairy that milks in a parlor or tiestall setting. In our Automated Milking System (AMS) discussion group, we have recently covered topics surrounding

everyday operations, routines and tasks. No matter what color robots a farm has, one goal of an AMS is to maintain steady traffic to the robot in order to reach maximum production and efficiency. Dairy farmers who spoke of successes in their daily routines, recommended to double- and triple-up on tasks in order to spend less time physically disrupting their cows. For example, one dairy farmer fetches cows, scrapes manure out of the barn, and beds with sand in the same time block. During this time, the rest of the cows in the pen are pushed up to the feed bunk alley where they can eat. Depending on the number of fetch cows he has at that time, he keeps the robot milking while he completes the chores in the pen. The fetch cows are typically finished milking when he is ready to move the rest of the cows away from the bunk to clean and bed the front stalls and alley. This leaves the robot open for
only a short time before the cows coming back over from the feed bunk will enter to be milked. 

Another dairy farmer has found success in moving their feeding time to the early afternoon instead of early morning. She claims that cows do not run out of feed overnight, and the feeding hours are more comfortable for the person doing the job. Automatic scrapers keep the alleyways clean, and open stalls are scraped by hand and wood shavings are added to the mattress beds as needed. Cows are not forced to move if they are lying down at this time.

Training heifers to the robot is a challenging, and sometimes frustrating, chore to many dairies. A dairy with four boxes was able to spend some time training heifers to walk into the robot, and become familiar with the prepping process, and the movements of the
robot arm. This made the transition to the milking string easier after the heifers calved. Some dairies rely on a strict fetching policy for heifers to make sure they are milked three times per day. Others allow a little more flexibility when training heifers to go through the robot, and have seen some get the hang of it sooner than others. If you are large enough to have a transition pen, it works well to concentrate your main fetch cows and heifers there as they get used to using the robots. An organic grazing dairy has learned that it can take a little while for the cows to overcome the herd mentality to leave the pasture and go into the barn to
milk. Most mature cows figure it out quickly, and come and go as needed. All heifers must go through the robot before leaving to go out to the pasture again. All farms agreed that fetching cows is both a science and an art.

Opinions about footbath location, frequency, and solution use differed among many dairies. All agreed that putting it at the entrance of the robot would reduce the number of visits to the robots. Some chose to have the cows walk through as they exit the robot, which did not seem to affect visits, but could potentially cause chemical damage to the robot machinery and mechanics in the long run. Others chose to put the footbath away from the robot at cross-alleys, and run the entire herd through several times a week.

When considering labor, farms with fewer than three robot boxes had no more than two full-time employees completing all chores on the farm, including feeding calves and heifers, and taking care of maternity and fresh cows. Farms with six to eight robot boxes said that almost everyone was cross-trained on all chores on the farm with a few more focused employees for robot maintenance. In speaking with larger robot dairies, it seems they tend to have specifically skilled employees for different areas of the farm including larger tasks of breeding, feeding, special needs cows, and robot maintenance. This helps to maximize the efficiency of each employee, and capitalize on their strengths. In the end, all dairies agree that to maintain efficiency in an AMS, it is good to
have a set routine for daily, weekly, monthly and yearly tasks. They also stress the need to be flexible in how you go about accomplishing each task, as different cow behavior and robot technology can sometimes interfere with your plans.

If you are a robotic farm interested in joining our discussion group, please send an email to: maq27@cornell.edu to find
out the details of the next meeting in your region. If you are in the Southwest Region interested in the AMS discussion groups, please reach out to Alycia Drwencke at amd453@cornell.edu