Sizing Milking Groups in Small Cow Dairies of Mediterranean Countries

SIMPLE SUMMARY: The dimensioning of cow milking systems has been studied for many years by many authors, but nobody has addressed the studies on small cow dairies that are actually present in many Mediterranean countries (with a number milked cows up to 100–120). The number of cows, the financial resource, the skilled workforce and the availability of time are parameters influencing the selection of the milking system also in smaller herds. What is actually lacking in these dairy farms is milking unit dimensioning, whatever the used milking system. This study analyzed the milk routines performed by milkers with different milking systems in small dairies (tie-stall and little parlors). The work-flow analysis was the starting point to develop different models for predicting the optimal milking unit sizing. ABSTRACT: 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.