The effect of milking permission and concentrate supplementation on improving milking frequency in an automatic milking system

In pasture-based automatic milking systems (AMS), success relies on voluntary cow traffic from the pasture to the milking yard. Therefore, it is critical to explore strategies that can increase motivation of cows to visit the AMS and increase the number of successful milkings when they do. This study explored the impact of milking permission (MP) settings and concentrate supplementation on milking frequency (MF, milkings per cow/day) and milk yield (kg per cow/day) in a research pasture-based herd with 1 AMS. Treatments used were: Frequent (F) and Restricted (R) MP, that granted cows permission to milk after 6 to 8 h and 9.6 to 14 h of the previous milking, respectively; and low (LC) and high (HC) concentrate supplementation of 0.5 kg per cow/day or 3.5 kg per cow/day, respectively. Sixty-four cows were randomly assigned to one of four possible treatment combinations (F+HC, F+LC, R+HC, R+LC) for five weeks and then crossed-over to a different treatment until they received all. Milkings per cow/day were highest for the F+HC (2.12) and the F+LC (1.77) treatment combinations, followed by R+HC (1.38) and R+LC (1.23). Milk yield per cow/day was highest with the F+HC treatment combination (20.1 kg), followed by the R+HC (18.2 kg), the F+LC (16.7 kg) and the R+LC (15.5 kg) treatment combinations. We showed that is possible to increase milking frequency and milk yield by increasing milking permission and concentrate supplementation (and that increasing both together has a greater effect) in a pasture-based AMS.