Fresh air!

Stagnant water, such as that in ponds and ditches, is known to allow dirt, bacteria and germs to survive and spread easily. That is usually easy to see. They often become “stink ditches”.

Drinking troughs could have the same effect. Therefore, watertroughs has to easily be able to flushed easily and / or be refreshed regularly.

However, also not moving air is bad.  Since you can’t see that and we get used to the smell of the stall, it doesn’t stand out. See the Tip about ventilation from August 2011.
Especially the highly producing or unfit cows have issues with effects deriving from still air.
Cows that have to produce a lot of milk also need a lot of oxygen.

Always make sure the air in the stall is moving!
Fresh air is a pleasure for the cows as for people, also in the robot room or milking parlor.

Set the fans at the lowest setting and open the windbreak curtains on (one?) side earlier and more often. Consider that even in the winter when it is not even warm, saturated air should be replaced by fresh air!

Make use of the “Help” Function

Previously, a thick folder with manuals was given with the delivery of a milking robot. However, with an update, a paper manual is of course outdated and is no longer always correct.

Instead of giving a new manual every time, it was decided to place this manual under the Help function in DelPro. Therefore, it is always in line with your current DelPro version.
It is at the very top right => Help.

If you click on “Help” and choose “? Help ” you can access the Help files. Under “Contents” you will find the entire manual and all off the help files.

Under “Search” you can enter a word or term and the help function will show all places where this keyword appears.

Under “List Topics” you will find all places where the keyword is found and if you click on a option here you will find the explanation from the manual under “Display”.

By clicking on that you will receive many answers to possible questions.

A smooth feeding area (in front of the feeding fences)

When the feeding spot in front of the feeding fence is nice and smooth, you can move the feed more easily and clean up the feed residues easily. Besides that, the cows also eat cleaner.

Rough floors are harder to keep clean and more fungi and bacteria hide in them. That means the food is less tasty, it sometimes stinks.

The cow’s nose is, not coincidentally, very close to the mouth and the result is logically: less feed intake. And with feed intake, some fungi, pathogens and infections come in easily. A rough feeding place is not only for feed intake, and therefore milk production but also bad for the resistance of the cow.

So, investing in a smooth eating area is not a luxury.

Mini-milker.

Although we would like to see a cow being milked in the milking robot as soon as possible after calving, it is simply not always possible. Either the cow is too labile after calving, or too sick, or the distance is too far, or for whatever reason it is not possible or not safe.

Fortunately there is a mini milker. This is a useful device, but it milks the most vulnerable cows in your company.

Pay extra attention to ensure that this mini milker is clean, and that on the mini milker as well as on VMS, the rubber liners, pulsation, milk hoses, etc. are well cleaned, function well and do not give an extra chance of infection or poor milkings to these vulnerable cows.

Check VMS Animal Settings.

A new month has started and the “Workroutine” list says that we have to check once a month the settings for individual cows.
Although the default settings are ok for the vast majority of cows, some cows require different settings, sometimes temporarily.

In order to make effective use of these Animal Settings and not accidently leave them if it isn’t necessary, it is recommended to check the overview once a month.

Take for example the “Milking Queue” list. First, click on a cow so that the bar turns blue. Second, press Ctrl + A and all cows turn blue. Third, click on “Batch Edit” and choose Batch AMS Animal Settings. Then, a list appears with the VMS settings for all selected cows.

It is especially important to look at the tab “Milk Permission”  to see which cows are “Allow Action” on Automatic Milk Permission and which are not, and whether “Temporary milking permission when incompletely milked” is being used properly.

Under the tab “Cleaning”, check which cows have a different setting for Teat cleaning or disinfection other than the standard and under “Configuration”, for example, whether “Existing” is used properly on existing teats and Teats to be milked. Also check if “Direct attach to teats” and other teat attach possibilities like “Abnormal teat shape”, are still the best for that cow, or not anymore?
And is “Base take-off decision on lower flow”  only used with the correct cows?

Making good use of these options offers a lot of benefits.