COMPARACIÓN EN LA EFICIENCIA DE CONVERSIÓN DEL ALIMENTO EN SISTEMAS DE ORDEÑO CONVENCIONAL Y ROBOTIZADO

Abstract

Since the first automatic milking system installation in a Dutch farm in 1992, milking robots have made their way reaching over 18,000 units in 2012. A factor that has popularized robotic milking is that the majority of farmers have seen as milk yield increases an average of 10 % compared to conventional milking. Feeding system in automatic milking involves changes which could affect to the feed conversion efficiency. Feeding can represent 40 to 50 % of farm costs and it is important to measure the efficiency with which feed is converted into milk, a change in feed conversion efficiency could be important in the economy of the farm. Two sets of cows, conventional and automatic milking set, have been fed with the same food, the amount of food ingested in each batch and 4% corrected milk production has been controlled. Finally, we calculated the efficiency of feed conversion, the costs of food per cow per day and the cost per 100 kg of milk yield in both systems. Keywords: Automatic milking system; conventional milking; feeding; cost