Determination of operating parameters in milking robots with free cow traffic

Abstract

In 2012 the first robot milking farm was introduced in Turkey. The basic idea is that cows are milked without human assistance with getting into the milking unit voluntarily at any time of the day. After milking they can move to the feeding area as well as resting area (cubicles). In this paper we studied the capacity of milking robots, daily robotic load, milking frequency per robot per hours, and the analyzed cow traffic has been chosen "free" in the farm. The research shows that every hour a robot milks in the average 6.1 cows. The robotic load at the present cow herd (123 cows) is 77.4 %. Both robots are loaded the same percentage (18.7-18.5 %). The number of herd is plenty enough for two robots. The aim of the research was to state how often the cows come to robots during all day and evaluate the cow traffic system on the farm. Milking average is 2.42 times a day. This is pretty close to the optimal and recommended interval (2.5-3.0 times per day). The robot idle time is approximately 18 %. In this case a large percentage of cows are fetched by workers.