Comparison of Parameters of Automatic Milking in Selected Countries in European Union and United States

Abstract

Automatic milking system (AMS) that may be used to milk dairy cattle is in the use from the year 1992 – back then the first robot was launched by Lely in the Netherlands (Nixon et al., 2009). Since then the interest in the automatic milking of cows is systematically growing. In 1998 an estimated number of farms with AMS worldwide was 250, in 2009 it was over 8 ths while in 2015 over 14 ths (de Koning & Van der Vorst, 2002; de Koning, 2010; Taing, 2016). Salfer et al. (2017) estimated that in 2017 over 35 ths AMS operated all over the world. Today, the number of only Lely robot milkers exceeds 30 ths worldwide (Lely International, 2019). The dynamics of the growing number of AMS installations, that may be observed nowadays, may result mainly from the deepening deficit of qualified employees, as well as the beneficial effect of robotization of milking on the level of milking parameters (Brzozowski et al., 2018; Piwczyński et al., 2020b; Sitkowska et al., 2020). The results of numerous studies suggest that the increase in milk yield after the AMS installation, even up to 20%, is directly caused by the increased number of milkings performed by the cow during the day (Rotz et al., 2003; Österman et al., 2005). Czerniawska-Piątkowska et al., (2012) noted the increase in the number of milkings from 2 to 4 times a day, which resulted in an increse of milk yiled in 305day lactation by 1160 kg. In the previous research by the authors of this study, it was shown that cows in AMS barns in selected Eropean Union (EU) and United States (US) countries milk on average from 2.50 to 2.73 per day (Piwczyński et al., 2020a). At the same time, in the latest research, conducted on a vast dataset, it was found that the change of the milking system from conventional to automatic resulted in an increase in the yield of cows in the first (+ 1 078 kg) and the second (+ 1 182 kg) standardised 305-day lactation (Piwczyński et al., 2020b). The beneficial effect of changing the milking system was also demonstrated in terms of the Comparison of Parameters of Automatic Milking in Selected Countries in European Union and United States