Episode 212 - Parlor efficiency vs Milking efficiency - Bimodal milking - UMN Extension's The Moos Room
Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. The OG 3 is here together again. Yeah. It's a rare deal, and I think the streak will be broken next week. Bradley's got a a crazy week.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:Brad, where what do you do it next week? Just just to give everyone a little this will be this will come out on Monday. So Brad is doing it this week as this comes out.
Brad Heins:Monday, I'm flying to Atlanta. I'm gonna drive to the University of Florida where we're actually gonna talk about milking parlor efficiency and actually the topic that we're gonna talk about today and do some measurements in the parlor, then back to Atlanta. I speak, at Rutgers University in New Jersey, so fly into New York City, speak about agrivoltaics, and then back to Minnesota late Friday night to end up speaking about agrivoltaics at the Minnesota All Breeds Convention at 8 AM Saturday morning. So I don't know how I'll do it, but it's gonna be crazy.
Emily Krekelberg:Godspeed, Bradley.
Brad Heins:I know I haven't done this in a long time, actually. It's been a long time since I've just jetted around like this, and I'm sure I'll be wore out and yeah.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:Yeah. That's, that's a lot. And I always I always whenever something like this happens, we have a week like this that's just nuts, and you're traveling all over the place, bouncing around, having to speak over and over again. It reminds me, extension used to go on the train. Like, they used to take the train around the state.
Emily Krekelberg:Yes.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:And so you'd hop on this train and you just leave for weeks at a time so that you could take the train around the state. And that's how you got around the state to do your extension teaching and programming. So it's the same concept, Brad, is flying to Atlanta, driving to Florida, back to Atlanta, up to Rutgers, and then home.
Emily Krekelberg:It's very planes, trains, and automobiles.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:Yeah. That's the extension.
Brad Heins:Yeah. It'll be fun. I'm I'm looking forward to it, looking forward to it, Seeing seeing some country. I'll be in Florida. It'll be nice.
Brad Heins:Hopefully, the weather will be nice. It's out in Morse today. It's snowing. It's 15 degrees and feels like it's below 0. So yeah.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:Okay. Let's get to it. Brad kind of alluded to the topic today, which is parlor efficiency, and we we actually really wanna address that word, parlor efficiency versus milking efficiency. And that is kinda the overall topic today. The shout out today goes to Ron Erskine, who's a veterinarian and a PhD, and he was with extension for and did a lot of extension work at Michigan State University.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:Got to meet Ron and hear him speak at our MVMA conference here this year, early February. And he really opened my eyes on something I hadn't thought about for a long time and had a little new data to come through on this, and and it's, it's big numbers. And it really addresses some of the things that are happening in the dairy industry, big farms, small farms, some of the the egos that get elbowing around in the room about numbers that people like to throw out that make them very proud, which is great, but sometimes really, really wanting to to vaunt how many cows you can push through your parlor per hour may not be the best thing for your production or the health of your cows. So that's kind of the topic for today. Any initial thoughts as I I run through the summary there?
Emily Krekelberg:Well, my initial thought is being, you know, being the fastest farm in the county doesn't mean you're the most efficient. I think we oftentimes, correlate efficiency with speed. And in some cases, that that can certainly be true, but I think as we dive into this discussion today, we'll we'll find out that that's not always the case. You know, Efficiency is not does not always equal being the absolute fastest at something.
Brad Heins:It's it's always a tough one because between efficiency and fast, you want people to get done fast, but you want to have low somatic cell count, low bacteria counts, clean cows, no mastitis. So sometimes I wish our milkers would speed up a little bit, but not at the expense of all those other things. So it's it's a it's a tough it's a tough balance. It's a tough balance.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:I look at this, and there's something I I tell vet students all the time, whether we're doing you know, when I had students riding with me, if we're palpating, if we are doing a surgery, what whatever it is. Let's go smooth. Smooth. Concentrate on smooth and get good. K.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:Speed will come with time. Right? Anytime you're doing something new for the first time, concentrate on doing it right. Don't rush yourself. And then as you get more comfortable, the speed will just naturally come.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:So get good first, and then speed will come with time. Now that is a luxury you have in certain things and not in others. So I think it's a good thing to think about, though, if you're a manager or if you're an owner and you've got employees around in the parlor, you know, throwing someone in by themselves just into the fire right away, maybe not the greatest idea. Let's have someone there to help them get good first so that then they can be good and fast. That's the goal.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:Right? We wanna be good and fast, which is what Brad's talking about. And I think that comes back to a lot of the topic today because when we talk about parlor efficiency and some of the trends that we're seeing as far as, like, how many cows can we get through, push through this parlor every hour, that emphasizes speed because the parlor becomes the choke point on the dairy and where cows spend a bunch of time. And we know the more time they spend in that parlor, the more time they're away from a place to lay down and a place to eat and a place to get water, the worse it is for them. That's stressful.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:We want them laying down, eating, drinking water, and milking as little as possible, but we can't sacrifice the actual milking preparation and everything else while we're doing that. So these gigantic rotaries have to spin super fast to get cows through. And what is being sacrificed a lot of the time when we're pushing cows as fast as possible through the parlor is prep. Now Emily did an episode for us on prep and all the different timing and everything else. And what we're talking about is really letdown because the thing that gets that happens most of the time, there's 2 terms.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:Bimodal milking is 1 and delayed milk ejection. They mean the same thing. So bimodal milking means that we put the unit on, we get some milk, and we have a low vacuum during that time. Then all of a sudden we have no milk. So the vacuum is up and it's really high for a certain period of time, and then we get more milk.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:And that just tells us that we didn't get enough stimulation right away or our lag time between stimulation wasn't long enough. So, Emily, let down is what we're trying to achieve. Right? We need that oxytocin release. It takes 1 to 2 minutes after physical stimulation, but we need to actually have the physical stimulation at first.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:Right?
Emily Krekelberg:Yeah. Absolutely. And so, you know, if you recall, and we can maybe look up what that, episode number was that we dove into prep a little more in-depth. Right? But the idea is the very first thing you wanna do is start touching that udder.
Emily Krekelberg:You want to get some physical stimulation on that udder so that oxytocin can start coming down. And so that's where we talk about the other steps in the prep as well. So maybe you're, yep, starting to simulate the udder. And that, you know, in parlor setups, we talk a lot about, you know, you maybe prep 3 or 4 cows at a time so you can get that timing right. Right?
Emily Krekelberg:So you wipe the first one, do some stimulation, and then you're working on 2 and 3 and maybe 4, and then you come back to 1, and there's been enough time for that letdown to happen. So it's really yeah. Thinking about, you know, not just getting that touch in, not just that physical stimulation, but what else needs to be done in that process. So it's not just milk milk letdown. You should also be sanitizing, you know, the teats and other, getting, you know, any junk, manure, straw, you know, things like that that sometimes cling to others, getting those things out of the way.
Emily Krekelberg:And yeah. And it can feel, you know, counterintuitive if you're somebody who's maybe really focused on, like, turns per hour in your parlour of like, well, we, you know, we can't be slowing it down, prep 1 cow at a time so you can immediately move to the next. And then we're sacrificing that that prep leg time, that let down time in doing that.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:So when we're on a rotary, if you watch a rotary go go go by, like, especially these big ones, right, it they they go fast. So the amount of time that an employee has, especially if they're standing in one place to actually physically touch this cow and get good stimulation, not to mention actually checking for mastitis and all these other things, can be really difficult to do. Now the whole, like, lag time, getting that exactly to 90 seconds, that's what we've concentrated on for a long time. Some of the data is telling me that doesn't matter as much. Right?
Dr. Joe Armstrong:So we as long as we're between 60 seconds and a 120 seconds, it's probably okay. And we could even push it out probably to 2 and a half minutes, which is just fine. But the physical stimulation is what we're missing. When that cow is whipping by an employee or you when you're standing at the parlor, can you actually get 10 seconds between all the different physical touching steps, minimum minimum of stimulation on those teats to make sure that you actually get all of that process started, that feedback loop that kicks the oxytocin off and gets everything working. And if you watch a parlor, and I've seen some good videos and Ron showed me some good videos as well, man, those cows are flying by.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:And if you expect an employee to actually get this step right, I don't know if it's possible. I really don't. Now if you're not on a rotary, you have the the option to just slow things down and take your time. On those rotaries, You can control the speed. Slow it down.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:I I really do think that we need to do that a lot of times, and we'll talk about all the other things that happen. But parlor efficiency, cows per hour is a tough metric. It's an important metric because we need to get cows back to their pens, but we also can't sacrifice milking efficiency, which is what Ron talks about and what I think is the term that we need to define yet. Milking efficiency really is the time the unit is on that we're actually getting milk. So in a good situation, right, if we see a cow that's got a unit on for 4 minutes and 45 seconds, we want that cow to be milking 4 and a half minutes during that 4 minutes and 45 seconds total time.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:That is a good milking efficiency, 95 ish percent. Poor milking efficiency, a lot of times looks like 60% or 70%. So if the unit's on for 3 minutes, 3 minutes 15 seconds, they're only milking for 2 minutes of that. So there's a minute and 15 seconds where there's no milk. We're not getting milk because we didn't stimulate everything correctly in the in the front end, and that has all sorts of consequences when we have a unit on but no milk.
Emily Krekelberg:Yeah. I mean, we probably aren't gonna dive into all those issues today, but, yeah, that's when you see a lot of teat damage, forming of keratin rings on the teat end, those types of things, you know, and that is damage to that tissue. And so that is hurting that cow more and making its efficiency go down even more.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:And the the comeback usually is, well, if she gets started a little bit late, it's not that big a deal because she'll just milk longer. And the data tells us that's not true. Absolutely not. So late starting cows don't have longer milking times. And then the the question is, well, she'll just make it up at the next milking because she'll hold that and go to it.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:And that's not true either. This is lost milk, and I think it's the worst kind of lost milk because you've already paid for it. You fed her. You've paid to make this milk, and then you're just not capturing it. That's a big hit to to profit because it is it is.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:It's pure profit and or pure loss, however you wanna look at it. Bradley, how do you do you guys measure this at your place? And I know you probably have some of the same sensors that Ron Ron has, but let's talk sensors for a second. What do you what do you got?
Brad Heins:Well, you know, we we I've never really thought about bimodal milking or any of this really until the last 3, 4 months. You know, we and we have an affie milk parlor, so we are able to tell milking times, all of that kind of stuff, how long cows get milked. Sometimes cows, the milkers on way too long. You know? We know basic information, but we really don't know what's going on.
Brad Heins:And so I'm on a research project with University of Florida, Colorado State University, Cornell, and University of Wisconsin, and we have got some sensors, they're called Vadias, and they're from Norway, and they're able to detect bimodal milking in in cows and what's going on. So really, you you attach this sensor to the milking machine, in the parlor or we're we're gonna do it in tie stall barns too. So we're gonna we're gonna figure out what happens in in tie stalls and not just parlors. We'll probably find that there's a lot of things happening in tie stall barns too that we just don't really know about. You know, we all think every time we all think about parlors and a lot of people on this project, you know, think think milking parlors all the time, but we're gonna go into some tie stall herds and and look at that.
Brad Heins:Prep can be very different between parlor herds and tie stalls and and you name it. Anyways, long story, we've put some of these sensors. I've I've I did some over Christmas break here at our dairy. I put these sensors on, and it was kind of interesting to see what was actually happening with these cows. And there's a wide range of stuff happening with these bodies.
Brad Heins:Some cows milk just fine. We see some cows with bimodal milking. You know, they're not prepped correctly. Probably the biggest thing that I saw is overmilking. We have been probably overmilking our cows way too much, and there's a lot of cows that, you know, I look on the list that are being over milked.
Brad Heins:It is crazy, and that can sort of lead to, you know, mastitis, high somatic cell counts, you name it. So I'm still trying to figure out what this all means and how to actually adjust our milking system to prevent the overmilking, whether it's, you know, setting the flow rate differently. We milk cows very dry here. There's no doubt about it, and that is on purpose, sort of, to to make sure we we get the milk out, but maybe we're, doing more damage by setting it too dry and, wanting to get every little drop out possible. It's been an eye opener to see, you know, our and this measures vacuum, all kinds of stuff.
Brad Heins:Everything is good, except we probably have a little bit of overmilking.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:I mean, those are the 2 things that we're talking about really. What what we're trying to avoid, like Emily said and Brad said, is basically high vacuum levels in the liner on the tea. That's all we're trying to avoid. And you get high vacuum levels when we don't have consistent milk letdown and flow or when we're done milking and the unit doesn't come off because we're overmilking, we're dry. And that's what causes the problems is this high vacuum level in the liner on the tea.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:That's the damage. That's congested t dens with blood in there, so you get a narrowed canal and not enough flow, and it it's just a mess. It causes all sorts of things. When we talk about bimodal milking, you know, Ron looks at this and he's got a bunch of data to show the incidence of this. Now this is in Michigan dairy farms, but they're they're not all that much different than Minnesota dairy farms.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:Anywhere from 25% to 75% of the cows were experiencing delayed milk ejection or bimodal milking. That's a that's a lot of cows. And, you know, it's a lot of milk as well because what they found when they looked at at this further and they're looking at, okay, well, what am I really missing in total milk when I have bimodal milking? Well, in a 30 to 60 second delay where that unit is on, but we're not actually milking and we have this high vacuum, They attributed that with 3 lbs of milk per milking per milking. And then if you get a greater than 60 second delay, that is 7 lbs per milking per milking.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:So we're looking at anywhere from 6 to 14, 15 lbs of milk per day if you're if you're milking twice a day, per animal per day that you're missing out on because of bimodal milking and not really because of bimodal milking. That's a symptom. It's because of poor prep and lack of physical stimulation. Now there's other things that cause delayed milk injection and bimodal milking as well. One of them being stressing cows out, moving them up too hard, any use of a hotshot.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:Unreal to think that people are still doing that in some situations, but they are.
Emily Krekelberg:I also just need to interrupt quickly to share my pet peeve.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:Go for it.
Emily Krekelberg:Then the I see it specifically in parlors. Quit banging sticks on the gates to get them to move faster.
Brad Heins:Amen. Amen.
Emily Krekelberg:Please stop doing that because all you are doing is scaring them and releasing a ton of adrenaline in that cow. And what does adrenaline do? Blocks oxytocin. Right? And what does oxytocin do?
Emily Krekelberg:Helps milk letdown.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:So,
Emily Krekelberg:yes. Also, parlor or wherever, you know, even if you're milking in a tie stall, what is that environment? Is it calm? Is it peaceful? You know, or is it loud?
Emily Krekelberg:You know, I grew up in a tie stall. We always had music playing on the radio, but never too loud. That was the extent of the noise. We had some background music. Right?
Emily Krekelberg:So, yes, all all of every little thing you do is gonna add up here.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:We don't have time to get down the rabbit hole of all the dumb things I've seen people do moving cows. I think the key point, if you're listening, is a lot of these things are set up by the culture that you have instilled on your farm and what you are emphasizing. Right? We have episodes on the culture on your farm and management and all that. If you are emphasizing these cows need to go through the parlor as fast as possible, then your employees are going to feel that pressure, and they're probably going to do that.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:And they're going to make sacrifices to get that done, or they're gonna do things that they probably shouldn't to make everything go faster. So you have to be careful what you emphasize, and this is where I think we get back to that whole discussion we've had plenty of times is explain why. All the why that you need to to your employees so that they know why we need to do things a certain way, so they know why it will help the farm and why it potentially might make their job easier. The big thing with this the other thing with low stress handling is a huge piece of this, but then injections in the parlor. So injections in the parlor, they're stressful, even oxytocin injections, which I we could argue about that all day, but you probably should not be doing.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:That stresses cows out, and it will cause bimodal milking. So be careful of that as well. It's it's it's a tough conversation to have. It's a big balancing act to get cows through the parlor fast, but also do it with good milking efficiency so that we don't cause all these problems. But there's an argument here when you're looking at total milk, you're missing out on potentially a ton of milk.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:If you're allowing this to happen, you're emphasizing the wrong thing. So keep that in mind. Now not everyone has fancy sensors like Bradley. So how would they know this is happening? Well, go watch the parlor, and the cows will tell you.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:We the cow tells you what's going on and if everything's good. Right? Even if you don't even watch prep. Right? Like, you could sit there with a stopwatch and watch prep or sit there and count and make sure that the physical stimulation's happening.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:But really what you need to do is just watch the cows. If you got units coming off left and right and cows kicking and stomping and kicking units off, it's because it hurts. Right? High vacuum on a teeth that's not flowing, it hurts. It's uncomfortable, and they'll kick units off.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:So instead of looking at those units and being like, wow. Now do I need to hire a whole another employee to put units back on all this stuff? Probably not. Probably not. Don't go to that extent, which I've seen.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:Maybe look further up the stream and see if there's a easy fix where we slow down, work a little smoother, and actually make everything go faster and better overall by being a little slower on the front end. That was my last soapboxy thing to say on this topic.
Emily Krekelberg:I'm gonna put on my Bradley hat and kinda be the devil's advocate here for a moment. So because, you know, I've had a lot of conversations with farmers about milking and, you know, whether it's tie stall or parlor or what have you. And and often, there's there's always a sentiment that comes up. Well, you know, I have some cows that are just slow milkers. And and I hear that a lot, and I and I understand that.
Emily Krekelberg:Right? Like, every cow is different. And, you know, especially older cow like, cows that are at peak milk, you know, they're gonna milk longer if they have more milk or right? There's a 100 different reasons for that. I guess I'm curious, Joe, of what can we do if if that's a a consideration.
Emily Krekelberg:Right? We have cows that are slow. Now I've been to farms that they actually they have their last group of cows as their slow group. So they purposely put the slow cows at the end. Because in a parlor situation, for sure, you know, if you have 8 cows on the side, everybody's done except 1 cow.
Emily Krekelberg:You're you're waiting for your slow milker. So, you know, some of them do just milk slowly, not because poor let down or anything. So what are some considerations for that outside of just, like, let's make a slow group that goes at the end?
Dr. Joe Armstrong:Yeah. I think this comes back a little bit to our discussion about, do you change your system to fit your cows or do you expect your cows to fit your system? In my opinion, it all depends on the the percentage of cows that you deem slow. If it's 1%, 2% of cows, do I change my entire system to fit that 1 or 2%, or do I get rid of those cows and I expect my cows to fit my system? That would be my inclination.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:Those cows might be perfectly good in another person's system. So I'm not telling you they have to go and have a career change and become burger or steaks or something. I'm saying maybe that cow is perfect for someone down the road that wants to milk in a tie stall or in even in a parlor and is willing to have a slow group, whatever it is. I I incline to say it can't be that many cows. And if that is consistent and it's always the same cow, maybe she should leave.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:She should leave and you probably shouldn't keep her daughters. There's all sorts of factors that go into that. Right? Like, who's milking slow? Is it the 15 year old cow that's got to eat this big around and her udders dragging on the ground?
Dr. Joe Armstrong:Well, yeah, she should go anyway. I mean, there's not a whole lot of 15 year old cows on Terry's anymore, but you get my picture. That's definitely a situation where you you make your cows fit your system, and they can leave if they don't fit. They don't have to go to town and go to to to market, but they can they can go to someone else's system where they fit better. Does that make sense, Bradley?
Dr. Joe Armstrong:I know we're get we're straying into the genetics talk a little bit again where I blend all the terms and you don't like it. But
Brad Heins:You do have some good points there, and and there is some genetics behind milking times and some breeds are not as great as others, and they they know that, and they're looking at genetic evaluations for milking time and milking speed. And there is a big interest in the US to do that, to look at the genetics of milking speed. Easy to analyze when you have parlor information and milking times, but when you're in other herds, it's kind of a guess. You know? It's really the farmer says, yep.
Brad Heins:She's slow or, yes. She's normal. I think one of the things that, at least what I've done here, is if there's a slow milker, and it's hard to say this because sometimes they are high production cows, it is time for them to go. If we have a cow that's milking, she could be milking 70, 80 lbs, and if it takes her over 15 minutes to milk, it is time to go because you are slowing down the rest of the system. That one cow, if especially in, in like our parlor where it's just random coming into the parlor and and you have, you know, 9 cows on a side and she's stuck in there in the middle and taken 15 minutes while everybody else is done.
Brad Heins:Well, now we've slowed down that whole side, and it just sets off the whole milking. So I have it is not very often, but I have culled cows for taking too long to milk even though they have high production because we simply can't slow the parlor down. It's there's that cow is probably costing us more in lost time and more employee wages than it is actually the milk production that she's producing. So I know people probably don't wanna hear that, but you you have to call the cows that are slow milking like that because I think they're costing you more than what it's actually worth.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:I totally agree. I can't answer that at all. I think we've given you plenty to think about today. I think it's something to to to look at in your system and think about, you know, okay, if I'm milking 3 times a day and I'm really rushing to get it done and I can find this milk in another spot and I can only have to milk twice a day, That's a big conversation. There's lots of factors involved, labor being a big piece of it.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:What your labor wants in terms of shifts, another big piece of it. So and there's all all sorts of things to consider, but this is a big piece of it as well. You know, I've actually had farms that go from 3 milkings a day to 2 milkings a day and slow everything down, And it turns out if you concentrate on the right things, sometimes you don't have any drop in milk because of concentrating on some of this stuff, and there's a lot of milk to be found. So keep it in mind. Remember, we're looking at anywhere from 6 to £15 per head per day that is experiencing this bimodal milking, and that's what we're losing as as a consequence.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:That milk can pay for a lot. So keep it in mind, parlor efficiency versus milking efficiency, how to balance all that together.
Emily Krekelberg:Alright. Well, if you have any questions, comments, or scathing rebuttals about today's episode, you can email those to themoosroom@umn.edu. You can also call and leave us a voice mail at 612-624-3610. Find us on the web, extension.umn.edu. Find us on Twitter @UMNmoosroom and @UMNFarmSafety
Emily Krekelberg:And of course, find Bradley on Instagram @UMNwcrocdairy. That's a wrap. Bye.
Brad Heins:Bye.
Dr. Joe Armstrong:Bye.
