Scientific and practical components of technology of milking robots on the dairy complex at the private agricultural enterpise “Vilshanske”

The aim of our scientific research was to determine the period and conditions of the viability of milking robots “Monobox”, produced by GEA (Germany) on the dairy complex of the private agricultural enterprise “Vilshanske”, Dvurichnaya district, Kharkiv region, Ukraine.  Two robots were brought to the above farm in 2018, each of the robots is able to milk 60 cows/a day by the desire of the cows. The peculiarities of the scientific investigation were that the efficiency of the use of the milking robots had been determined in the conditions of the solution of the main scientific and practical tasks to create the model welfare conditions for the maintenance of highly producing cows. It has been found out that in spite of high initial investments the use of the system of a cow milking on a voluntary basis by robots had many advantages, the main of which was the minimization of the human factor, the automatizing of the most important and labor-intensive processes when milking the cows. However, in addition to the effective system of milking the cows’ productivity was influenced by some other significant factors, such as: breed selection, qualified selection, economically substantiated fodder basis, the balanced feeding, maintenance in the welfare, for example, the creation of the favorable microclimate, the free movement, free access to the feeds and water, proper veterinary service, etc. The analysis of the use of robots testified to their good adaptation to the animal needs and the average number of approaches of the cows to the milking robot was 3, 4 times. The quality of milk increased due to the precise doing of the operations as for the fulfillment of the sanitary norms of care about the cow’ s udder and milking glasses. The milk was separated by the milking robots depending on its quality.  The robotized system of milk testing and the collection of the data on every quarter of the udder allowed to carry out the analytical treatment and to evaluate the state of the animal, to get the economy of money, first of all, at the expense of the decrease in the manual labor. The viability of the milking robots was 3 years and 10 months. High scientific and technical level of the economic activity of the milking complex; the scientifically substantiated fodder basis, modern technologies of production, the conservation and the use of feeds, unrestrained maintenance of cows in comfort, all-year-round monotype nutrition of cows by biologically valued feed mixtures, high quality reproduction of the herd are the basis of the effective use of milking robots. In the conditions of the milking complex of the private agricultural enterprise “Vilshanske” where the milk yields per year per cow in 2018 were on average 10556 kg and the profitability of milk production was 34,4%, the viability of the milking robot was 3 years and 10 months.