Innovation, practical benefits and prospects for the future development of automatic milking systems

Abstract

Automatic milking systems (AMS) were designed to replace existing, labor-intensive machine milking and are an area of rapid development in modern dairy farming. The popularity of AMS lies in the convenience of management, decreasing workloads and the consistency of milking compared with non-automated machine milking. Nevertheless, this innovation has not been reviewed comprehensively and the practical benefits of AMS are still unclear. This review gives a brief overview of the historical development of milking machines and the workflow process of state-of-the-art AMS. In addition, a series of comparisons between AMS and current milking machines are made with respect to labor savings, quality parameters, udder health, herd behavior and mastitis detection and are summarized on the basis of relevant studies to show the benefits of the technological changes achieved by AMS. Finally, this review addresses several deficiencies in the technology and procedures of current AMS that need to be improved and also assesses recent advances in milking techniques with a particular focus on their potential for application in AMS.

Keywords

automatic milking systems (AMS) / innovation / milking machine / practical effect / future prospects

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported financially by the China National Science and Technology Support Program (2012BAK08B04).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Hongzhe Jiang, Wei Wang, Chunyang Li, and Wei Wang declare that they have no conflict of interest or financial conflicts to disclose.

All applicable institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2016. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)