Preliminary results of a field study on goats milk yield and lactation persistency as affected by automatic cluster removals

Automatic cluster removers (ACRs), although rarely adopted in goats milking, are available to remove milking equipment after milking. Main advantages of ACRs are overmilking reduction, improved teat condition, labour saving, improved milking routine. An innovative flow-based ACR for sheep and goats was coupled with an electronic milk meter was installed on the 16+16 parallel milking parlour with 32 milking units of the experimental goat farm associated with the University of Milan. Two balanced groups of 12 Saanen goats each were selected according to parity and days in milking. Animals were milked twice a day., and the milking machine was set up to provide 90 pulsations/min in a 50:50 ratio with a vacuum level of 42 kPa. One group was milked with an ACR switch point of 70 g/min and a delay time of 10 s, while the reference one was milked disabling the ACRs. Reattachment of milking units to goats was discouraged. Individual milk yields were recorded at each milking session through electronic milk meters and the flock management software. Milk yields recorded on the whole lactation were analyzed to evaluate the ACR effect on goats daily milk production, and by nonlinear regression, to determine Wood’s lactation curves of the two groups. Results highlighted a higher mean milk daily production for the ACR group with 1.82 kg vs 1.68 kg of noACR group (P < 0.001). The results showed that ACR group reached significantly higher milk production with a significant better persistency during the whole lactation.