Nutritional approaches in robotic herds

Abstract Text: Cows in herds equipped with conventional milking parlor systems follow a structured, consistent, and social milking and feeding routine. Furthermore, in most cases, cows in these systems receive all their nutrients from a TMR, whereas in herds equipped with robotic or automatic milking systems (AMS), cows receive a fraction of their nutrients during milking, mainly as a means to attract them to the milking system. In this regards, the AMS presents both a challenge and an opportunity for feeding cows. The main challenge resides in maintaining a minimum and relatively constant milking frequency in AMS. Hover, milking frequency is dependent on many factors including the social structure of the herd, the farm layout design, the type of traffic imposed to cows, the type of flooring, the health status of the cow (especially lameness, but also mastitis, metritis, etc.), the stage of lactation, the parity, and the type of ration fed at the feed bunk and the concentrate offered in the AMS. Uneven milk frequency has been associated with milk losses and increased risk of mastitis, but most importantly, with a lost opportunity for milking the cow. On the other hand, the opportunity from AMS resides in the possibility of milking more frequently and feeding cows more precisely or closely to their nutrient needs (in an individual basis), potentially resulting in a more profitable production system. However, feeding cows in the parlor or AMS has many challenges by itself. On one side, feeding starchy, high-palatable ingredients, may upset rumen fermentation or alter feeding behavior after milking, and feeding high-fiber concentrates may compromise total energy intake and ultimately milking performance. Nevertheless, AMS (and some milking parlors, especially rotary ones) offer the possibility of feeding the cows to their estimated individual nutrient needs with the aim of maximizing profits (rather than milk yield). This approach requires that not only the amount of feed offered, but also the composition of the feed for each individual cow need to change according to the nutrient needs. The change in composition can be achieved by combining several feed ingredients or concentrates on real-time as the cow enter the AMS (or the milking parlor). This review discusses the opportunities and pitfalls of milking and feeding cows in an AMS and summarizes different feeding strategies to maximize profits by managing the nutrition of the cows individually.

Keywords: modeling, precision feeding, optimization