Calvo Angela, Airoldi Gianfranco
Department of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences (DISAFA), University of Torino, Largo P. Braccini 2, 10095 Grugliasco, Turin, Italy.
Animals (Basel). 2020 May 4;10(5):795. doi: 10.3390/ani10050795.
A dairy farmer chooses the number of milking groups in function of the herd size, stall type and milking system also in small cow dairies (number of animals lower than 100-120). In these dairies, there are different milking systems (bucket, trolley, pipeline, little autotandem, herringbone or parallel parlors) and each of them has a different work routine. The knowledge of the routine is the starting point for assessing the milking installation, because it determines the number of milked cows per hour. Different milking systems have common tasks (as pre-dipping, inspecting foremilk, udder preparation, attaching teat cups, post-dipping), but in the meantime there are different operations that characterize each specific routine (e.g., animal entry and exit if there is a parlor, bucket, trolley or milking group positioning if tie-stall). For this reason, we surveyed twenty small dairy farms located in the Piedmont Region (Italy) with different milking systems to correctly acquire the specific milking routines. Different models were therefore studied using the observed routines in in the examined farms. These models were then used to calculate the number of milked cows per hour and the number of milking groups. The main findings were simple equations, specific for each milking system, easily accessible by the farmer to correctly size his milking system.
奶农会根据牛群规模、牛舍类型和挤奶系统来选择挤奶组的数量，小型奶牛场（存栏量低于100 - 120头）亦是如此。在这些奶牛场中，有不同的挤奶系统（桶式、手推车式、管道式、小型自动串联式、鱼骨式或平行式挤奶厅），并且每个系统都有不同的工作流程。了解这些流程是评估挤奶设备的起点，因为它决定了每小时挤奶的奶牛数量。不同的挤奶系统有一些共同的任务（如预浸、检查前奶、乳房准备、安装奶杯、后浸），但同时每个特定流程也有不同的操作（例如，如果是挤奶厅，就是奶牛的进出；如果是拴系牛舍，则是桶、手推车或挤奶组的定位）。因此，我们调查了位于意大利皮埃蒙特地区的20个采用不同挤奶系统的小型奶牛场，以正确掌握特定的挤奶流程。随后，利用在被调查农场中观察到的流程研究了不同的模型。然后，这些模型被用于计算每小时挤奶的奶牛数量和挤奶组的数量。主要研究结果是针对每个挤奶系统的简单方程式，奶农可以轻松获取这些方程式，以便正确确定其挤奶系统的规模。
