Investigations into system and cow performance efficiency in pasture-based automatic milking systems

Although previous research has demonstrated that AMS can be successfully integrated with pasture-based systems, performance and efficiency levels observed in pasture-based AMS present greater variability and are lower in comparison to indoor AMS. Therefore, the general aim of this thesis was to identify strategies on how to improve system performance in pasture-based AMS operating with voluntary traffic. The literature review explored the current situation in regards to system and cow performance on pasture-based AMS. Gaps in knowledge and potential ways of increasing productivity were identified. The demonstrated effect that the number of cows milked per robot had a greater effect than milking frequency on robot performance (Chapter 3), together with the high degree of variability regarding individual cow performance (Chapter 2), led to developing a methodology to identify Efficient and Inefficient cows based on their combined effect of milking frequency and milk yield (Chapter 4). The hypothesis that differences in cow behaviour could explain, at least in part, the differences observed between levels of efficiency in cow performance was confirmed after a field study was conducted for that purpose (Chapter 6). A validation of a recently commercially released version of an activity and rumination monitoring system was conducted (Chapter 5) to allow differences in cow behaviour to be determined. The potential to manipulate robot utilisation at whole herd level was then explored in Chapter 7, in which the results of a field study conducted to evaluate if experienced cows could quickly adapt to a short period of voluntary-batch milking, without cow performance being affected, were summarised. In summary this thesis makes a significant contribution based on novel, original, and scientifically-generated knowledge, that together, will help to advance systems and cow performance and efficiency on pasture-based AMS in the future

Ready for the Robot: Bovines in the Integrated Circuit

Situating cows as co-laborers in global technology sectors, “Ready for the Robot” explores the predicament of cows working as robot operators, information workers, and data producers. The data cows produce shape the conditions in which they work, including their own bodies, as statistical evaluations of cattle abstract profitable traits and warp their connection to breed. Milking robots are posited as providing freedom to dairy cows, but this is far from guaranteed. Rather, cow bodies are programmed to fit the limitations of the robot and the routines of the automated farm, coding that breaches categories of breed. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, this article argues for a “cowborg politics” that shapes technology for new research questions and methods that produce genuinely better working conditions for cows and their human companions and co-workers

New Technology Tools and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) Applied to a Sustainable Livestock Production

Agriculture 4.0, a combination of mechanical innovation and information and communication technologies (ICT) using precision farming, omics technologies and advanced waste treatment techniques, can be used to enhance the biological potential of animal and crop productions and reduce livestock gaseous emissions. In addition to animal proteins being excellent nutritional ingredients for the human diet, there is a growing concern regarding the amount of energy spent converting vegetable crops into animal protein and the relevant environmental impacts. Using the value chain analysis derived from the neoclassic production theory extended to industrial processing and the market, the hypothesis to be tested concerns the sustainability and convenience of different protein sources. The methodology implies the use of life cycle analysis (LCA) to evaluate the efficiency of different livestock diet ingredients. The use of feeding products depend upon various factors, including cost reduction, consumer acceptance, incumbent industry response, civil society support, policy consensus, lower depletion of natural resources, improved sustainable agri-food supply chain and LCA. EU policy makers should be aware of these changes in livestock and market chains and act proactively to encourage the use of alternative animal proteins

The effect of dairy cow breed on milk production, cow traffic and milking characteristics in a pasture-based automatic milking system

peer-reviewedDespite the increasing frequency of integrated automatic milking (AM) and pasture-based systems, there is limited knowledge available on the suitability of different dairy cow breeds to these systems. Thus, the objective of this experiment was to establish the performance of three breeds in a pasture-based AM system with respect to milk production, cow traffic and milking characteristics. The breeds examined were Holstein Friesian (HF), Jersey x HF (JEX) and Norwegian Red x HF (NRX), all of which have been previously identified as being compatible with conventional milking pasture-based systems. The experiment was conducted in mid-lactation and variables measured included milking frequency, -interval, -outcome and -characteristics, milk yield/milking and per day, wait time/visit and per day, return time/visit and the daily distribution of milking events. Data were statistically analysed using least squares means mixed procedure models, while the proportion of different milking events were analysed using the logistics procedure. While there were no significant differences between breeds for milking frequency, or milk production, significant differences did exist for proportion of successful and failed milkings events, with NRX cows recording the highest and lowest proportions, respectively. JEX also recorded a significantly shorter dead time/quarter at 17.6 s/milking compared to the HF and NRX breeds at 28.5 and 27.7 s/milking, respectively. Significant differences also existed with regard to cow traffic, with the NRX breed returning from pasture more quickly and waiting a shorter time both per visit and per day in the pre-milking yard. The distribution of milking events differed between the breeds examined, with the JEX cows recording less milkings in the hour after the pre-selection gate changes of 0000 h and 1600 h. JEX also recorded a significantly greater proportion of milkings than the NRX and HF cows during the hours at which the lowest proportion of total milking events were recorded (0400–0600 h). For the optimisation of the AM system it is important to have an even distribution of milkings throughout the day. Based on the evidence from the current experiment, this may be best achieved by a mixed breed herd rather than a single breed herd. However, the performance of the examined breeds should also be analysed in the context of the whole AM farm system, over an entire lactation, taking into consideration the range of variables that contribute to a profitable farm system

Visiting a Farm: An Exploratory Study of the Social Construction of Animal Farming in Norway and the Netherlands based on Sensory Perception

Most citizens in modern societies have little personal knowledge or experience of animal farming. This study explores the social construction of animal farming by studying how citizens perceive and evaluate modern farming after visiting a farm in real life. We wanted to understand how (non-farming) citizens develop an opinion of modern dairy farming when experiencing dairy farming in real life and practice, and how they translate what they see, smell and feel into an evaluative perception and mental image. We therefore conducted dairy farm visits with citizen panels in Norway and the Netherlands and asked the panel members to register what they saw, heard, smelled and felt and what they appreciated (or not) on the farm. The aspects that respondents registered could be grouped into four themes: the animals and their products, the rural landscape, farm practices and the farmer. When respondents described their experiences of these aspects on a specific farm, they appeared to look at them from three angles: modernity, tradition and naturality. Most respondents wanted farms to be modern, traditional as well as natural, but they were ready to negotiate and to accept compromises. Many respondents considered the farmer to be responsible for reconciling modernity, tradition and naturality. By taking different topics and issues into account and looking at animal farms from multiple angles, the respondents’ developed a balanced and nuanced opinion of animal farming. The image that they constructed was not dualistic (arcadia versus factory) but pluralistic, thus at the same time more complex but also more flexible than expected. We expect that the development of a pluralistic image and balanced opinion was facilitated through the direct experience of dairy farming and farm life. The article starts with a theoretical analysis and aims to contribute to recent debates in rural sociology in two ways: 1) it studies how material experience and mental perception interact in the construction of an evaluative image of animal farming; and 2) it explores the social construction of animal farming as embedded into to the construction of nature, rurality and human-animal relationships. It concludes by discussing the contribution of the findings to the ongoing theoretical debate in this fiel

Modeling variability of the lactation curves of cows in automated milking systems

Historically, cow selection criteria were developed for conventional milking systems that have regular milking intervals (MI). However, in automatic milking systems (AMS), there is variability in MI within and between cows. These sources of variability provide an opportunity to identify cows with high daily milk yield (DY) and long MI. An extended MI (longer than 16 h in pasture-based systems) has a negative effect on DY. Cows that tolerate extended MI and maintain high DY can be considered more efficient than cows with low DY and long MI, or with high DY but short MI, thereby improving robotic system use. Knowledge of the behavior and parameters of lactation curves of cows in AMS could help farmers to identify cows with a specific lactational phenotype. The objective of this study was to identify individual cows with high DY and long MI within herds, which could reflect increased tolerance to milk accumulation under AMS. A database containing records for 773,483 milking events for one year (July 2016–June 2017) from 4 pasture-based AMS farms was used. Lactation curves within each herd were fitted using several mixed models including fixed effects for the parameters of the lactation curve and random cow effects. Predicted curves of average DY according to parity (multiparous and primiparous) were obtained. The best linear unbiased prediction of the random cow effect allowed us to categorize lactations as having either high or low milk production. The median MI of each lactation was then used to categorize cows as having either short or long MI. Daily yield at the peak of lactation, days to peak and 305-d cumulative milk production were used to compare the effect of DY and MI categories, as well as the DY × MI interaction. Milk production by multiparous and primiparous cows with high DY and long MI was between 35 and 45% higher than that of the low DY and short MI. From all lactations analyzed, the incidence of animals with high DY and long MI across farms was 7.5%. We have identified and quantified a new, AMS-specific, phenotype (the combination of a relatively higher DY with relatively longer MI) with potential to increase use of AMS units. Identifying more efficient animals should help generate new approaches for differential management and for selecting cows in AMS.Fil: Masía, Fernando. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba; ArgentinaFil: Lyons, N. A.. Intensive Livestock Industries; AustraliaFil: Piccardi, Mónica Belén. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias. Departamento de Desarrollo Rural. Área de Estadística y Biometría; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba; ArgentinaFil: Balzarini, Monica Graciela. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias. Departamento de Desarrollo Rural. Área de Estadística y Biometría; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba; ArgentinaFil: Hovey, R. C.. University of California at Davis; Estados UnidosFil: Garcia, S. C.. University of Sydney; Australi

VALIDATION OF AN AUTOMATED BEHAVIOR MONITORING COLLAR, AND EVALUATION OF HEAT STRESS ON LACTATING DAIRY COW BEHAVIOR WITH ACCESS TO A FREE CHOICE SOAKER

Precision dairy technologies (PDT) are becoming more accessible and are therefore becoming more common on commercial dairy farms and in dairy research. Prior to any use of PDT, one should understand the precision, accuracy and bias of the device by a validations studies before interpreting the behavior measurements. Thus, the objective of the first section of my thesis is to validate ruminating, feeding and resting measurements of a behavior monitoring collar used in the second section. Precision dairy technology is used in heat stress studies to compare behavior of cows exposed to different heat stress treatments or abatement strategies. Heat stress is an important issue to research because it negatively affects cow behavior, physiology, and therefore production in lactating dairy cows. The objective of the second section is to assess the ability of a free choice soaker to reduce heat stress measured utilizing PDT and compare use of a free choice to a soaker in addition to one of the two treatments 1) no mandatory soakings, or 2) two mandatory soakings

Dietary crude protein and nitrogen utilisation in two contrasting dairy systems : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Animal Science, School of Agriculture and Environment, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

This thesis evaluated the efficiency of crude protein utilisation (ECPU) in dairy cows and nitrogen (N) utilisation efficiency (NUE) of two pasture-based dairy systems differing in intensification levels in New Zealand. During two consecutive seasons, in the low-intensity production system (LIPS), 257 cows were milked once-daily with low supplementation, and in the high-intensity production system (HIPS), 210 cows were milked twice-daily with higher supplementation. At every herd test, ECPU was calculated as protein yield (PY) divided by crude protein intake (CPI), estimated from feed intake. Milk urea (MU) was measured in early-, mid-, and late-lactation. Urinary N was estimated by back-calculation from estimated faecal N, taking into consideration N contained in milk and in body tissues. Pasture allocation represented 93% and 65% of the total intake for LIPS and HIPS cows, respectively, resulting in higher CPI for LIPS cows throughout the lactation. Compared to HIPS cows, LIPS cows produced 22% and 16% less milk and protein, with 32% higher MU, and 25% lower ECPU. Urine N was 34% higher in LIPS cows but faecal N was 5% higher for HIPS cows. A multivariate predictive model of ECPU was developed, including milk production performance, live weight variation, diet composition and quality along with climatic variables. The model accurately predicted the ECPU in an internal validation dataset (RPE = 6.96%, R2 = 0.95). Milk urea was not selected as a predictive variable of ECPU, considering that cows of higher ECPU also had higher MU. Compared with cows of high MU genetic merit, cows of lower MU genetic merit had lower milk production and similar ECPU. A whole-farm assessment of NUE, N losses and financial analysis was undertaken. On whole-farm level, LIPS produced 23% less milk and NUE was 31% lower when compared to HIPS. The lower MY along with the 35% higher N fertiliser applied on LIPS produced a higher N surplus per ha causing higher N losses when compared to HIPS. Despite the higher feed costs of HIPS, profitability was 16% higher because of milking more cows with higher MY when compared to LIPS