Relationships between the milking frequency, production, and grazing behaviour of dairy cows in a pasture-based automatic milking system

Milking frequency is an important performance metric in automatic milking systems. The aim of this study was to discern whether dairy cows which exhibit a different milking frequency also exhibit different grazing behaviours, and how this may influence their milk production. Grazing and production data were collected across two 12-day periods. A total of 40 cows were selected which either displayed a high (n = 20) or low (n = 20) milking frequency. The average milking frequency of the high and low groups was greater than 3 and less than 2.5 milking events per day, respectively. Ten cows from each group were studied using RumiWatch sensors during each period to collect grazing data. Temporal grazing patterns and correlations of variance were computed for the high and low milking frequency groups. High milking frequency cows were shown to graze for more time and at a faster rate in comparison to low milking frequency cows, with notably different temporal patterns reported. For all animals studied (n = 40), variation in total eating chews was poorly correlated with milk production (R2 = 0.25; p = <0.001). The correlations between eating chews and milk production specific to each milking frequency group did not return statistical significance (p = >0.05). Findings may be useful in informing pasture allocation decisions and developing management practices specific to milking frequency expression.

N/A

Australasian Dairy Science Symposium 2024

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

4