USING MARK AND MOTIVATE TO TRAIN FRESH COWS

A few years ago, I was helping with a robotic milking startup near Merced, California. Pushing cows through the robots kept us pretty busy for the first 72 hours. After that, there was a little more time to talk about managing the barn after the startup. One of the topics was training new fresh cows. As usual, there was some concern about fetching fresh cows too often, and teaching them that someone would continue to fetch them when it was milking time. Since this was a guided flow barn, we also needed to make sure the cows learned to use the sort gates. That's where I learned to mark and motivate to train cows.

One of the keys to successful fresh cow training is to do a little less, as the cows learn to do

more. For the first milkings, cows need to be guided into the commitment pen, through the robot, and in some cases, out of the commitment pen and back to the bunk. Later, it is enough to get them into the commitment pen or fetch pen and let them find their way through. Eventually, you can just to get the new cow up and point her towards the robot. We knew what we needed to do, but I left the farm before we really figured out how to execute it on a large scale.

It was a least a year before I caught up with that dairyman again. By then, he had the execution figured out.  He began writing the date on each cow’s hip when she entered the robot pen. This made it easy to identify cows that were new in the barn. Anytime anybody walked through the pen for any reason, if they found a cow that had been in the barn less than a week, they got her out of her stall. That’s where motivating cows starts. I call it “Mark and motivate.”

In a free-flow barn, once we get the cow up, she will probably go to the bunk, and get an extra meal. If she goes to the robot, she will be milked before she is overdue, so she doesn’t become a fetch cow. Getting her out of her stall doesn’t interfere with cow traffic as much as fetching her all the way to the robot. It gives her an opportunity to find her own way to the robot.

In a guided-flow barn, extra trips to the sort gate can speed up the learning curve. When cows go to the sort gate before they have milking permission, they learn that the sort gate doesn’t just send them to the commitment pen. They learn that the sort gate can also send them directly to the feed bunk. There are plenty of opportunities to milk cows, once they learn that the gate takes them to the feed bunk.

Marking fresh cows when they come into the robot pen is the logical place to start. If cows go to the robot pen soon after calving, marking can become part of the fresh cow protocol. If cows are milked in a parlor for a few days, consider waiting until cows move. Most importantly, get marks on the cows it fits into a routine. Lazy cows can also be marked if they need extra motivation. It might be helpful to use different colors each week, to make it easier to focus and find the right cows.

Training cows consistently is the key. Once the cows are marked, anybody can motivate them, and everyone can do it the same way, every day. There is no need to print a list, put an app on the phone, or understand the robot software. Try mark and motivate on your farm today.