User:Cmosconi/sandbox

Definition of milking speed and box time

1. Introduction

Automated Milking Systems (AMS) do measure many traits. The definition of these traits might be different per brand of AMS. Data of these traits is often used by e.g. milk recording organisations, herdbooks or management software providers. When organisations store these data in their databases and use for certain services, it is important to know how these traits are defined.  

x=\left(-c-\sqrt{\left(b^2-4ac\right)}\right)/\left(2a\sqrt[3]{\left(a/b\right)}\right)

Figure 1. ICAR logo

Test	Parameters
Dry test	working vacuum (kpa), effective reserve of milking (l/min), regulation sensitivity (kpa), vacuum pump airflow (l/min), airflow at vacuum and/or milk pipelines (l/m).
Wet test	claw vacuum during peak flow (kpa), bimodality, claw vacuum drop (kpa), milk flow during peak (kg/min), overmilking (min), milk yield overmilking (kg), overmilking (min), milking flows (kg/min).
Fall-off test	avg vacuum phase 1 (kpa), undershoot(kpa), vacuum drop(kpa), overshoot(kpa), avg vacuum phase 2(kpa), avg vacuum phase 4 (kpa).
Pulsation test	frequency (bpm), ratio (%), limping (%), dipping (kpa), a, b, c, d phases of pulsator (% and ms).

These definitions could be used by milk recording organisations etc. to take into account differences between traits measured by different brands of AMS. These definitions could also be used by manufacturers of AMS to take into account for product development, to get more alignment in trait definitions between different brands of AMS.

Aim of this document is to propose a harmonized definition of some traits measured by AMS.

At this stage, the traits milking speed and box time are taken into account. Traits related to teat coordinates are described in Section 5 (Conformatoin Recording) of the ICAR guidelines.

1. Average milking speed

Definition = AverageMilkingSpeed (gr/min) = {TotalMilkYield / TotalMilkingTime}  

• Total milk yield (kg) = Sum of all quarter level milk yields (kg)

• Total milking time = Last Take-off time (of any teat) - Begin of milk flow (of any teat)

Recommendations for manufacturers:

• Exclude any pre-treatment time from milking time.

• Provide take-off settings (threshold in gr/min at take-off, user-defined or default) and settings for the beginning of the measurement period, as milking time will be influenced by take-off settings and by the definition of the beginning of the milk flow.

Recommendations for data users:

• Don't use data of milking sessions with kick-off´s, interrupted and re-attached milkings because milking time will vary for these milkings.

1. Box time

Different types of box time:

• Milking

• Feed-only  

• Pass-through

• Selection

• Training

Definition = {End box time - Begin box time} (HH:MM:SS)

• Begin box time = datetime of recognition of animal

• End box time = datetime when cow has exited the box (which might be different from opening of the gate), best to detect when cow has actually left the box

Additional data is needed to understand the status and completeness of the milking visit (Wethal and Heringstad, 2019). Registered issues during the milking are e.g.  

• KickOff: at least 1 teat cup kicked off

• TeatNotFound: unable to find at least 1 of the teats for milking

• IncompleteMilking/FailedMilking: Minimum of 1 teat was registered as incompletely milked.  

• The expected milk yield for a milking session depends on previous milkings. Settings like yield less than 80% of expectation for a teat, the milking session would be recorded as having an incompletely milked teat.

• Manual interaction like teat manually attached or milking finished manually.

Recommendations for manufacturers:

• Make codes available (and harmonise them) that express if a milking was successful and the cause if the milking was not successful.  

• Uniform names and definitions for interrupted, incomplete or failed milkings as well.

Recommendations for data users:

• Check the availability of a code that expresses if a milking was successful and the cause if the milking was not successful. The meaning of the code can be used to consider if the box time record has to be used for the intended purpose or not.  

• To check if there is any extra box time due to feeding concentrates, e.g. through user specific settings such as 'PriorityFeeding'.

1. References

Wethal, K. B., M. Svendsen, and B. Heringstad. 2020. Are farmer assessed temperament, milking speed, and leakage  genetically the same traits in automatic milking systems and traditional milking systems? J. Dairy Sci. 103:3325–3333. https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.2019-17503