Analysis of teat cup attachment processes with an multibox automatic milking system

The objective of this study was to analyse the influence of several effects on the performance of the attachment process and the milk yield under practical conditions considering as example the multibox automatic milking system Leonardo® of WestfaliaSurge GmbH. The teat cups were manually attached to the udder within about 5% of all milkings. The automatic attachment of teat cups failed totally within approximately 1% in all cases. If necessary several attempts were executed. The analysis of 104,666 automatic teat cup attachment processes based on 213 dairy cows showed that the first attachment attempt was not successful within 12.3% of all milkings and repeated attachment attempts had to be performed. The random animal effect explained 16 % of the total variance of the threshold trait ‘repeated attachment attempt‘. Thus, the occurrence of repeated attachment attempts was not restricted to special animals. In the case of several attachment attempts before the regulary milking process the milk yield was reduced up to 3.5 kg per milking. Differences between dairy cows in terms of ‘time required for attachment’ were more pronounced (w = 39%). The trait ‘time required for attachment’ did not affect the milk yields negatively. The proportion of manually performed attachments and totally failed attachment processes was low, respectively. But the results clarify, that the number of milkings with repeated attachment attempts still has to be reduced because of the negative impacts on the capacity of the system and the milk yield. In this context the selection of dairy cows does not seem to be favourable.

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