Robotic milking can provide farmers with a raft of information that can be used to increase production and improve herd health.

For a farmer in their first year, the main focus will be on getting milk flowing and cows moving, but there are some figures that farmers should be aware of.

Responding to the information provided can be an efficient way to highlight issues and alter management, this was the message from the team at Lely Center Mullingar at a recent adviser training day.

Sean Callan, farm management support specialist with Lely, was speaking on the day.

A lot of information on cow performance can be got from the dashboard.

“When it comes to failures (cows that are not fully milked) the aim should be for less than five/day/robot. If it is over this, then there is a problem somewhere in the system, and more often than not that will be down to management.

“Every failed milking, the cow is coming out half-milked, which can lead to somatic cell count issues and milk quality issues.” Another indicator to be aware of is the number of attempts it takes the robot to attach to the teats. “Connect attempts should be 1.3 or lower/cow. Heifers or cows being trained-in can be higher than this, and dirty tails or udders can also cause issues,” Sean said.

Box time

Sean continued, “The box time for cows should be six to seven minutes. If they are under six minutes, then it means cows are coming into the robot too often, which can lead to cows being over milked.

“Slow milkers are also not suitable for robots but this will generally mean farmers only culling one or two cows from their system.”

Rest feed concentrate (%) outlines the percent of feed that a cow has been allocated through the robot that is not getting consumed. The target for this is to be less than 10%.

Cow box time should be between 6-7 minutes per visit.

“It could be a case that the cow is being allocated too much feed, or that they are not spending enough time in the robot,” Sean explained. “This could lead to issues where cows might not be getting enough minerals for example.”

The maximum feed per visit to the robot is 3kg of concentrates.

“If you want to feed 12kg for example, for high yielding cows, then you might need to look at out-of-parlour feeding. Ideally, you want to keep it to a maximum of three milkings/cow/day as any more than this and you will reduce the amount of cows that the robot can carry.”

The robot will also show how long it has been since a cow has been milked. The target here is to go a maximum of 24 hours without being milked. If more than 10% of the herd go over this then the cause needs investigation. Poor grassland management can be one of the main culprits.