Design for cow flow - podcast transcription

Dairy design for cow flow

Greg: Welcome to Dairy News. I’m Greg Mills and today I have with me Tony Dowman from Kempsey. Now Tony, today we’re talking about improving cow flow through dairy shed design. If I’m designing a shed what are the major things I should be thinking about?

Tony: Well before you even start designing a shed, a good place for information would be the CowTime website which is a website funded by Dairy Australia and on that there’s a wealth of information including information on cow flow. The reason for cow flow being important is that it can occupy a lot of time in the dairy if cow flow is not good and the ultimate result in cow flow is, whether it be on a rotary dairy or a herringbone is not to have to leave the pit to convince cows to come onto the platform.

If you have to do that then you have a fundamental problem with cow flow. The exceptions would be obviously breaking in heifers and that last batch of cows that come through, ones that really do not want to be milked at all. They’re the ones that hang back to the last batch of milking cows and they may need to be convinced to come onto the platform.

Greg: So what’s typically good design features or perhaps the things we should avoid in a dairy?

Tony: With cow flow there’s two issues at stake, well actually three issues at stake. The first one is design. The second one is knowing cow behaviour and the third one is the human intervention of it all. When it comes to design features, anything which will baulk from a cow from coming into the platform needs to be removed, things such as too smooth a concrete which they find difficult to walk on which will make them baulk and not want to go on the platform, a change in lighting going from a light area to a dark area, things like steps and elevated areas where a change in elevation of the floor gives them an excuse to actually stop walking and try to negotiate that or not negotiate that at all.

Things like the design of the pipe work at the entry point of the platforms. These days most of the entry areas have a race which will hold two or three cows, and having cows lined up head to toe in race formation gives a chance for the cows to have better cow flow because they just like to follow the front cow onto the platform. So those are some of the issues that you need to consider, things like noisy vacuum pumps or milk pumps close to the entry point need to be removed, very shiny surfaces of stainless steel or milk receival vessels need to be either shielded or removed again.

So there’s a number of design features there that you need to look at which will improve cow flow.

Greg: You mentioned the human influence, what should the people in the shed be looking for and doing?

Tony: The very first thing we’d like to remove from the operator’s hand is the piece of polythene pipe. If you need to use polythene pipe to convince cows to come on the platform, you really have to work out is it the cow that requires the polythene pipe or is just out of habit that you are using the polythene pipe to move cows off and onto platforms. Noisy operators who tap the polythene pipe on the steel rails to convince cows to walk, that may just be humans doing what they did yesterday and the day before, and may need to be reconsidered.

But one of the big things that people do to interfere with cow behaviour and cow flow is leaving the platform and walking out amongst the cows to convince cows to come on because what happens is that the cows that are waiting to come on actually turn around an walk back through the herd. It would actually stop the cow milking sequence because every cow has their preferred side and their preferred batch to be in when they’re being milked, and if people are walking through the holding yard to force cows to come on and actually stirring up the herd, that breaks up the milking sequence of the herd. So the herd has to reorganise itself to get back into sequence again and that’s why we say that the ultimate result for good cow flow is cows voluntarily entering the platforms when they want to come on without humans interfering with their milking sequence.

Greg: So if cows are happily coming onto the platform, does that improve production? Is there a production benefit in getting this right?

Tony: Not in litres per cow or how you would like to measure cow performance, but it’s a time factor and it’s a frustration factor. If you can cut down your  milking times by half an hour because of good cow platforms, that’s a half hour extra time that you’ve got to do something with. Now you may choose to play golf, spend that time with the children or spend more time on the tractor fixing up broken infrastructure, how you use that time is up to you but it’s very frustrating when you’ve got a dairy that’s got the capacity of milking say, 100 cows per hour and because of poor cow flow you’re only milking 60, 70 or 80 cows per hour and it’s taking longer time in the dairy than is necessary.

Greg: Thanks Tony. Do you just want to mention that CowTime website again for our listeners?

Tony: Yes, the CowTime website is www.cowtime.com.au follow the prompts on the website and there is a section there all about cow flow.

Greg: Thanks Tony.

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