Friday, March 29, 2024

Gain an extra half hour

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Who wouldn’t like to leave the dairy half an hour earlier?
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DairyNZ scientist Paul Edwards said it could easily be done by speeding up rotary platforms, increasing automatic cup remover (ACR) cutoffs and reducing idle time in herringbone dairies.

What he called “end-of-milking” criteria – when a cow was finished milking and could leave the dairy – was what slowed up milking on many farms. He said instead of setting rotary speeds at 10% of go-around cows, it should be set on the ability of the person cupping the cows. 

“For an eight-minute milking time for a 40-bail rotary there are 12 seconds to put the cups on each cow. In a 60-bail rotary that is reduced to eight seconds and in a 80-bail it’s down to six seconds which is not enough time, which is why 80-bail rotaries need two people putting cups on.

“Even if 15 or 20% of cows are going around a second time at these speeds, you will still have more throughput per hour than slowing the platform down.”

A good cupping technique was important to speed up milking and prevent injury and a DairyNZ Milksmart attaching cups video on YouTube could be used to teach staff.

Changing the threshold for ACRs was also important, for both herringbones and rotaries.

“The most common threshold in New Zealand is 0.2kg/minute which is very low by international standards. If you increase it to 0.4kg/minute our research has shown you can shorten milking by 40 seconds and not lose production or increase somatic cell counts (SCC).”

He said applying maximum milking times strategies where there were no ACRs did the same thing.

“In a herringbone dairy where there are no ACRs, row times are limited by the slowest milking cow and staff are often standing around waiting. If the slowest milkers have their cups taken off after the standard time, the milk that is left, which is only about 200-300mls, is so small it will not cause SCC problems and it will be milked out first at the next milking, causing no loss in production.”

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