Abstract:

The aim of the study was to analyse the effect of changing the milking system (from a milking parlour to automatic milking) on daily yield of cows and cytological quality of their milk. GLM and FREQ procedures of the SAS package were used in the statistical calculations. The change in the milking system caused a short-term decrease in daily yield and an increase in milk somatic cell count (SCC). In the long term (12 months), daily yield increased (P ≤ 0.01) from 27.7 kg milk for cows milked in the milking parlour to 31.1 kg milk for cows milked automatically. The change in the milking system from the milking parlour to automatic milking had a positive effect on milk somatic cell count as the natural logarithm of SCC decreased from 12.44 to 11.97. The proportion of milk samples with low SCC (<100,000 cells/ml and from 101,000 to 200,000 cells · ml–1) increased by 2.84 and 7.52%, respectively, whereas the proportion of milk samples with high SCC (>400,000 cells · ml–1) decreased by 5.68%.

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