Feed availability is key with robots

A balanced diet is crucial to a dairy farm’s success, and managing all the variables that come with feeding cows is just as important. Variation can exist within forage piles, ingredients, feed mixing and delivery, and at the feedbunk. It doesn’t matter if a ration is perfectly formulated if these other factors keep cows from eating it.

For farms with automated milking systems (AMS), ensuring constant access to feed is a huge focus since cows are no longer on a synchronized schedule and have less feedbunk space per cow.

Full bunks, now what?

Feedbunk management plays a role in feeding and milking behaviors. This includes the frequency of delivering the partially mixed ration (PMR) and the frequency of feed pushups.

A Canadian study observed that when raising PMR delivery from once to twice per day, cows visited the robot two hours closer to each feeding. Feed delivery potentially stimulated the cows to get up, motivating them to milk while up, and move around in a free-traffic system.

When researchers bumped up feed delivery to six times per day, it resulted in a more uniform distribution of animals at the feedbunk at any given time and reduced the time cows spent standing around the AMS waiting to milk. Improved feedbunk distribution resulted in reduced sorting, cows spending less time searching and straining for feed, and cows prioritizing their time for lying down. Improving the feed availability through the PMR has also supported improvements of milk fatty acid profiles, suggesting a healthier rumen and thus healthier cow.

The right number

With automated feed delivery systems, it is more feasible to deliver fresh feed to cow’s multiple times per day. Research shows that more frequent delivery of PMR stimulates cows to get up, eat, and visit the AMS.

Disrupting cows too frequently can cause cows to have reduced lying time, less efficient use of their time feeding at the bunk, and a greater amount of refused visits to the AMS. While we want to promote smaller and more frequent meals throughout the day, dividing the feed for the day between eight or even 12 separate drops can result in significantly less feed at the bunk at any one time compared to feeding six times a day. If feed is spread too thin at the bunk, cows must work harder and travel further along the feedbunk to get a full meal.

The upper limit of how frequently to push up feed should be determined at each farm based on the amount of feed in the bunks throughout the day and when it’s needed. Rick Grant, Ph.D., with the Miner Institute has recommended feed to be pushed twice an hour for the first two hours following fresh feed delivery. Since fresh feed delivery stimulates cows to rush to the feedbunk, early and frequent push-ups help minimize sorting and keep feed within the cows’ reach.

However, many farmers have seen automated feed pushers struggling to successfully push large volumes of feed. Especially on farms with once daily PMR delivery, one or two manual feed pushups may be necessary before automatic feed pushers are used the rest of the day.

On farms with automated feed pushers, the upper limit for feed push-up frequency averages between every one to two hours. Achieving this push-up frequency on farms without some or any of the automation mentioned above is usually not practical or realistic.

Improved feed availability

Work with your consulting team to evaluate the status of your farm in relation to your goals and identify the most limiting factor.

For example, if the goal is to promote greater dry matter intake (DMI), those steps may look like:

• Raising PMR feeding frequency from one to two times a day.
• Target a minimum feed push-up frequency of four to five times a day to ensure feed in the bunk is accessible to cows and to limit the strain and effort cows must exert.
• Note the timing of your feed delivery or push-ups. Avoid delivering fresh feed or pushing up feed while cows are locked away from the robot or feedbunk.
• Scheduling feeding and push-ups around your alley scraping, fetching, robot washes, and other practices that will disrupt the cows may help maximize their effectiveness.

When considering feeding automation, weigh the potential benefits against the costs. Manually raise the frequency of fresh feed delivery and/or feed push-ups for a couple of weeks. If doing so positively impacts DMI and, subsequently, milk production but manually doing this chore is not feasible in the long term, then automation can be a good investment.

Ensuring adequate feed availability is just one of the many needs dairy producers are tasked with carrying out daily for their cows. To support cow health and milk production, feed availability and bunk management must be top of mind.

This article was originally published in the September 25, 2024, issue of Hoard’s Dairyman.