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CAPACITY AND COSTS TO MILK COWS IN AUTOMATIC (AMS) AND MANUAL SYSTEMS

Published by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, St. Joseph, Michigan www.asabe.org

Citation:  Pp. 046-052 in Fifth International Dairy Housing Proceedings of the 29-31 January 2003 Conference (Fort Worth, Texas USA)  701P0203.(doi:10.13031/2013.11601)
Authors:   K. Sällvik and A. Sällvik

When planning a dairy barn and conducting an economic analysis for investment in a - conventional or AMS (automatic milking system) dairy barn - it is important to have realistic information about how many cows per day can be milked or how many kg milk per day can harvested in the different brands and types of systems. The AMS technique is quite new and there is little objective milking capacity information available, especially for multi milking stall systems. A theoretical model to calculate the milking capacity is quite simple to establish for an AMS with a single stall. In multi milking box systems where one robot serves 2 to 4 milking boxes it is much more complicated to calculate the theoretical capacity. Theoretical capacities have been compared with actual achieved capacities observed by time studies and included measured milk yield. The measured capacity was 1600 200 kg per single stall robot per day. To compare the cost for milking (cents/kg) the costs for labour and investment are summarised for different milking techniques and herd sizes. The cost for milking with an AMS was calculated to be 0.05 and 0.04 USD/kg for one and two single stalls, respectively. For a herringbone (2x8) with about the same annual milk delivery as two single stalls the comparable cost was 0.04 USD/kg.

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