Fluctuations in daily production, incomplete milkings, kicking off, etc.

When you look at the Attention board at Daily production overview, there is a symbol of a graph at the top right. If you click on it, a graph will appear where you can see over a longer period what the average daily production has been in the period you specified.

It is interesting to look at this over a period of a year or even longer.

The average number of milkings per day can be seen and also whether more or fewer incomplete milkings or kicking offs occurred in a certain period or on certain days.

Sometimes you see slow changes, sometimes peaks or troughs.

Can you remember why things went less well or better than average in certain periods / days? For example, a major ration change, hoof-trimming day, many new heifers calved, a long standstill due to a malfunction or service, ….. .

And, even better, can some negative changes be prevented in the future?

Do you have a concentrate feed box?

Sometimes you need a concentrate feed box to be able to give the desired extra amount of concentrate feed that cannot be taken up in the milking robot to high-producing cows.

Do you have insight into whether these cows are actually coming there and whether the programmed amounts are being taken up sufficiently?
There are nice lists to show this, especially when it is programmed as an extra type of feed.

And when was the concentrate feed box last calibrated?

When and how to collect cows?

You don’t want to teach the cows to wait for someone to pick them up. So when do they stay away too long? After how many hours do you pick them up?
It is very important to look at lactation days and expected milk yield.
And based on her experience with the milking robots, does she know the game and will eventually get there on her own, not too late.
Cows with many lactation days may come less often than fresh cows.
At least if the cell count / conductivity is low it is not a big problem.
If the new-milk cows don’t come often enough, something is simply wrong.

It is not good if fresh cows stay away for more than 10 hours!

And pay attention again to the new heifers, the animals with the least robot experience, which must be taught intensive robot visits as soon as possible after calving.
They must also visit the VMS within 10 hours

By picking up cows at irregular times, you teach them not to wait for the farmer to pick them up.

And the collection round always start from the robot’s exit or where the cows return to the stable after a robot visit.
Then they are much calmer and otherwise you will first scare cows away and have them come back later.
Take the manure scraper in your hand to use along the boxes and as an extended arm and you have done 2 rounds in one go.

How quickly do your heifers get over three milkings?

It is very important, and also significant, that your heifers quickly reach more than 3 milkings per day after calving.

You can see this under “Animal” and then click on the Lactation Overview under Herd Charts. For this overview on the right, only check the two checkboxes for the milkings, see picture.

If all goes well, older cows that are already familiar with the robot will have over three milkings per day within a week.

Heifers still have to learn it and so it can take longer.
The sooner they are above 3 milkings, the better.
That depends, among other things, on this:

• How healthy and vital are they after calving?
• How soon after calving do you bring them to the robot?
• How much time do you put into learning
• What is the occupancy rate at the robot(s)?
• How much space is there around the entrance of the robot, can they access it if older cows are also walking around in the (waiting) area in front of the robot?

Analyze milk production by lactation or lactation stage.

With the results of the milk check you often also receive overviews per lactation number or per lactation stage. These data say a lot about the persistence of your herd, but also about how, for example, the dry period has progressed.
We all know that cows are not allowed to grow or get less condition when they are dry.

If the cows peak too short, this often comes from the dry period, or even from the last month(s) prior to the dry period.

Do heifers do very well or not and the next lactation vice versa, it is very interesting.

Your HMA advisor has lists with which you can read this information with your DelPro data.