Maximizing grazing with a mobile milking robot

Recent development of milking robots (AMS) is often followed by a change in production systems with a decrease in grazing despite its numerous benefits. Because milking requires a permanent access to the robot, paddocks far from the AMS or separated by roads are not grazeable by cows. Moving the AMS might be a solution to keep grazing in these contexts. Thus two experimental farms, Liège in Belgium and Trévarez in Brittany, France, chose to design a mobile AMS by placing it on a trailer. This trailer is inside the cowshed during winter and on a grassland summer site during 6 months per year. Two grass management systems have been tested during 3 to 6 years: allocating two or three paddocks per 24h (systems AB and ABC). The impact of these different systems on animal performances, cow traffic, grass valorisation, working time and feeding costs were assessed.
These two experimental farms show that using a mobile milking robot is possible with a moving time of the robot, plus the cows and the drafting gate, limited to 15 men-hours in total, the AMS being stopped only for 3 to 4 hours. High grass valorisation and good traffic to the robot were reached in both AB and ABC systems with limited human interventions. However, the investment cost of such solutions remains relatively high and has to be balanced by decreased feeding costs.