ISPEC 12. International Conference on Agriculture, Animal Science & Rural Development, Ordu, Turkey, 6 - 08 July 2023, pp.801-819
Engineering research has a great role in the development of robotic milking systems. However, it is essential to review the integration of robotic technologies into farms. Since the first commercial automatic milking system in the Netherlands at the end of 1996, it has been tried to ensure that the animals are healthy and volunteer for the milking process by coming to the robot on their own free will. Milking systems, which transfer technology from other sectors, renew themselves with the sensitivity of working with live animals. Practices that seem good for one business do not fit another. For this reason, every work done or to be done in the field is very valuable and will enable the system to renew itself by seeing the deficiencies and include the rapidly developing and changing new technology into the current system. In this study, it was aimed to determine the parameters related to milking to increase robot efficiency by following the work of robotic milking systems. The study was planned according to the type of “guided cow traffic”' and was carried out on a commercial farm with 500 Holstein Friesian dairy cows. The main building, where the milking cows are located, consists of four independent barns under the same roof and there are 8 robotic milking units, 2 in each barn section. In the study, four-year performances of milking robots in a barn section of the farm were examined. In the four-year trials comparing the two robots in the barn, the average number of milking per cow per day was 2.82 milking/day in the first three years, while it increased to 3.06 milking/day in the fourth year. In the first year of the trials, the daily milk yield of the cows, the yield per milking and the time spent on the robot were 26.1 kg, 9.1 kg and 7.2 minutes, respectively, while in the fourth year these values were 46.6 kg, 15.3 kg and 7.7 minutes. determined. While the number of rejections and the duration of the robots were increasing in the first three years (2.6-5.5 and 2.2-4.9 minutes), these values decreased to 2.0 and 1.9 minutes in the fourth year. While the daily milking numbers of the robots in the barn were 145.6 in the first year, this number increased to 161.3 in the second year, but decreased from 157.1 to 153.0 in the third and fourth years. There was little change in the daily milking time intervals of the cows, such as 8.14 to 8.30 minutes. In addition, while the loading rate of robots in milking was 72.3% in the first year, this rate increased to 82.2% in the fourth year. In this way, the idle time of the robots decreased from 22.4% to 10.8%. The reason for the low data for the first year in the barn may be that the first year is the beginning year for the farm and animals. The high data for the fourth year can be attributed to the fact that cows with high milk yield in the whole farm are collected in this barn section, cows adapt to the environment and recognize the robotic system.