It should come as no surprise that cows are cows, and no matter how they’re milked, the same rules governing cleanliness and hygiene apply.
That lesson was brought home last month at the National Mastitis Council, where Don Anderson, with Quality Milk Management, New Brunswick, Canada, compared milk quality in robot- versus conventionally-milked herds.
The first robotic milking system in North America was installed in Canada in 1999. Since then, about 1,300 Canadian dairy farms have installed Automated Milking System (AMS) technology, or about one in eight Canadian dairy farms.
After nearly 20 years of experience, Anderson says what is true of conventional milking systems is doubly true of AMS milking: