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What is milking efficiency? Why is it important?
Erskine, R.; Moore-Foster, R.
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Objectives: This seminar will present potential pitfalls of stressing parlor efficiency as the overarching goal in a herd milking routine. The concept of milking efficiency will be discussed, especially as it relates to milk ejection and milking routine. Finally, the potential negative impact of bimodal (delayed) milk ejection on milk yield will be presented.
Background: Most dairy farms have their milking equipment evaluated and maintained on a routine basis. Although proper equipment function is necessary for milking performance, it does not guarantee it. Two management areas that can lead to poor milking efficiency are: 1) milking routines that don’t achieve consistent milk letdown and 2) overmilking. Either one of these problems can leave cows ‘high and dry’ and expose teats to high vacuum levels.
During stimulation of teats before milking, a neuro-reflex arc stimulates the pituitary gland to release oxytocin into the blood, then to the udder. It takes about 1 to 2 minutes for oxytocin levels to increase in blood to optimally contract myoepithelial cells that surround the milk ducts, which then squeeze the milk down towards the teats. The two important points about this oxytocin release are enough stimulation (at least 10 seconds of actual physical touching) of the teats and the duration of the latency period, that is, the time interval between when teats are first stimulated until the cluster is attached—lag time is the time between unit attachment and milk ejection. Unfortunately, with increasing herd size, the number of cows that can be milked through parlors per hour, or parlor turnover rate, is often identified as one of the choke points of herd capacity. Thus, parlor efficiency, measured by cows milked per hour, milk produced per hour, parlor turnover per hour, etc., is emphasized at the expense of adequate milking preparation for the cow.
Results: Review of milking dynamics from over 60 Michigan dairy herds found that a mean of 25% of cows had bimodal milk ejection (range 0 to 75%) at the time of unit attachment. However, when the time of milk letdown after attachment (latency period) was compared to the milking unit on time in over 3,800 milkings, there was no correlation between these two variables Thus, milking time did not increase because of bimodal ejection.
In a follow up study of over 600 cows in a herd with a 50% frequency of bimodal milk ejection, delayed milk ejection of 30 to 60 seconds in duration resulted in a loss of 1.5 kg of milk per milking, and a delayed ejection of over 60 seconds resulted in a loss of more than 3 kg of milk per milking. This outcome was from a single milking for each cow on the trial, the impact of delayed milk ejection over longer periods, such as a week are not yet fully understood. However, preliminary work sug- gests that 1) for any given milking routine, there is a range of frequency of bimodal events between cows, and 2) cows that have bimodal milking ejection more frequently will also have greater losses in milk yield over time.
Conclusions: A proper premilking routine should allow for 90% of cows with immediate milk let down after cluster attachment, and milk should be flowing 95% of the time while the cluster is attached. Despite the drive to fully utilize a milking parlor in terms of cows per hour, if parlor efficiency is stressed to much over milking efficiency, it is possible to increase the amount of milk gained from a parlor each day. However, the law of diminishing returns comes into play at some point, where maximum is no longer the optimum, and the actual milk per cow per day is decreased.
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About
Affiliation of the authors at the time of publication
Michigan State University, USA;
Colorado State University, USA.
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