MILKING WITH ROBOTS - WHAT TO EMPLOYEES NEED TO KNOW - PART 2 - COWS
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Whether you are transitioning to robots from another milking and housing system, moving employees from another role to the robot barn, or hiring someone who has never worked on a dairy, you need to make sure your workers have certain skills to work with automated milking. This is the second article in a three-part series designed to help you measure and teach those skills. The first article focused on things to know about the robots. The final installment will cover things to know about the software. This issue is all about cows, including handling, fetching, training, and recognizing health problems.
Cattle Handling
Like many other areas of dairy management, poor cattle handling, or stockmanship, can
create more problems in robotic milking than it does in conventional milking. Fetching cows requires good stockmanship to avoid bringing large groups of unwanted cows to the robot. It is important to understand flight zones, blind spots, and balance points to move cows through sort gates and into robots. With parlor milking, much of the cattle handling involves moving groups of cows. With robots, there are more opportunities to handle individual cows. A different skill set is needed. There are some excellent videos to start the training process. Practice and coaching with real cows in real situations is a great way to follow-up.
Fetching
Fetching seems simple enough. Take a list of cows, walk through the pen, and bring them to the robot. That’s the way I thought it would work at a one of the first startups I supported. I learned that, even with experienced workers, it was best to walk the pen with them the first time. This is a great opportunity to establish a logical route to sweep the entire pen. Cross alley gates should be closed to keep the fetch cows moving the right direction. If the fetcher does not know the cows, it will be helpful put a mark on the cow, and cross her off the list once she is moving towards the robot. The final article in this series will discuss which cows to fetch.
Training and Motivating
Training and motivating look a lot like fetching, but they are not the same thing. Training
involves making sure new cows get to the robots three times a day during the first week. Motivating is reinforcing the training for cows that get lazy and milk less frequently than they should. New cows need to be fetched all the way through the robot until they are willing to enter the robot on their own. Once cows understand the system, it should be enough to get them out of their stalls and point them towards the robots. In guided flow systems, push new cows through the sort gates and finger gates when they don’t have miking permission to make sure they can find their way to the feed bunk. Mark the date on the cow’s hip when she calves to make her easier to find during training.
Recognizing Health Problems
Robotic milking systems flow best when the people stay out of the pens. The catch 22 is that with less time in the pens, workers need to be more proficient at recognizing health problems. Lame cows stand out when a group is moved to the parlor because they usually migrate to the back of the pack. They are less obvious in a robot barn. Workers should be taught to carefully evaluate new fetch cows. If she suddenly stopped coming to the robot it could indicate a health or lameness problem. Activity and rumination monitoring systems can help.
Most importantly, set your workers up for success by making sure they understand cow behavior that is normal and expected. Give them plenty of opportunities to practice what they have learned. Encourage discussion of the things they observe in the barn.
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