STUDIES OF INTERVALS BETWEEN MILKINGS IN AUTOMATIC MILKING SYSTEMS

Abstract

The  aim  of  the  research  –  to  state  how  the  voluntary  milking  principle  implements milking  cows  with  automatic  milking  systems  (AMS).  The  research  was  performed  on  a farm  where  two  groups  of  cows  are  milked  by  two  company  “DeLaval” milking robots VMS and for driving the cows to the robots the selective system “feed first” is applied. There  were  76  cows  in  the  research  group  with  the  average  milk  yield  of  the  herd  7000 kg/year.  The  research  results  showed  that  milking  in  robots  the  programmed  milking  fre-quencies  and  the  intervals  between  milking  did  not  materialize.  The  milking  frequency reduces but the intervals between milking increase. The intervals between milking vary in a very  wide  range  and  their  variations  have  irregular  character.  Milking  delays  in  50%  of cases do not exceed two hours, but there are cases that they last for eight hours and more. Analyzing the research results it can be concluded that to ensure a successful milking pro-cess  an  important  role  is  played  by  the  person  who  drives  the  cows  that  are  not  milked  in the  planned  time  to  the  robot.  The  question  what  influence  on  the  productivity  of  the  ani-mals is left by the variable intervals between milking that often considerably exceed the set values remains open.