Parlor efficiency is important but don’t sacrifice milk quality for speedy cow throughput. The bottom line for milking time in a double-12 parlor: It should take about 12 minutes per side to milk, or five turns per hour.
To evaluate parlor efficiency, dairies track such things as cows milked per hour, turns per hour, or pounds of milk per unit per hour with the goal of improving efficiency.
Questions are:
- What are reasonable measurements of efficiency?
- How important is the milk quality?
- What’s the relationship between parlor efficiency and milk quality?
Rusty Korth, a QMPS’ client in Caledonia, N.Y., says, “The first issue is to do those things that promote milk quality, and the second is to do those things efficiently.” (full article is here)
What do we do at Cattle Care?
We show dairymen not only good procedures and routines but also what is going wrong in the parlor and when it happens. We are doing that using existing cameras at a dairy.
“Individual routines quality”
The computer vision algorithm measures the quality of prep (pre-dipping, stripping, and post-dipping), breaks it down by individual, and provides performance data based on thresholds set by dairyman.
As a result, a dairyman gets statistics on specific employees with video samples that could be used for incentivizing or training purposes.
We create cards for each worker - you can choose your farms hero!
“Throughput charts”
As a part of our milking parlor product, the chart shows how much time it took for the milkers to do a certain milking procedure.
Dairymen can see, for instance, how many minutes were spent to have all the cows milked starting with prepping the first cow. Another example is the time of loading and preparation of cows.
If you want to know more about Cattle Care products please feel free to contact us!
