AP—Animal Production Technology: Designing the Optimal Robotic Milking Barn, Part 2: Behaviour-based Simulation
✍ Scribed by I. Halachmi
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2000
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 329 KB
- Volume
- 77
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0021-8634
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Robotic milking a!ects factors that determine the barn layout, such as cow behaviour, farm routine, feeding procedure and management practices. As there is hardly any experience with robotic barns, and each farmer has his own management attitude, depending on his personality and local conditions; the optimal layout, therefore, is speci"c to each case. A new integrated design approach is needed, in order to overcome lack of experience and to be able to design the optimal layout for the robotic milking barn suitable for any farmer or site. A behaviour-based simulation model, which enables a designer to optimize facility allocation in a barn, has been developed as a design tool.
The proposed approach overcomes di$culties of characterizing robotic milking barn design. Simulation experiments allow equipment and layouts to be evaluated jointly, an initial design can be "ne-tuned to produce a balanced system (an &optimal layout'), speci"c to the farm in question, within a reasonable time. Executing the suggested methodology, step by step, an optimal robotic milking barn has been designed, meeting both economic and animal welfare needs. If a simulation study had not been performed and if a bottleneck in the cow-tra$c had been discovered after installation, the cost of "tting retrospectively extra capacity could have been signi"cant. On the basis of simulation results for the farm presented as a case study, signi"cant design conclusions were reached.