Cow comfort and milk quality
Did you know that a cow spends between 2 and 3 hours a day on social interactions with its herd companions? Knowing and meeting the needs of our animals is a key aspect of achieving the best yield on our farms.
The Quick talk given by Oriol Franquesa on “cow comfort”, goes through the basic areas that we have to take into account when we are talking about this subject, for example, did you know that the cows that produce most spend over twice as much time resting as a normal cow?
We need to know what our animals spend their time on in order to be able to encourage those behaviours that help us to produce more – less stress, fewer losses caused by mastitis and better production indices!
During the session, Oriol Franquesa explains why a stressed animal does not produce as much as it should, and why this affects reproductive performance, for example the main areas to work on when we refer to cow comfort are:
- Heat stress
- Density of the animals
- Resting areas
- Ventilation
- Design of the facilities
- Flooring
- Milking time comfort
“The comfort of our animals, as well as improving animal welfare, is fundamental to achieving better results in terms of milk production”
Oriol makes special reference to one of the points that is perhaps overlooked when speaking of comfort on the farms, but to which cows devote up to 3 hours a day on average: milking time comfort.
This time includes the movement of the animals to the milking parlour, the holding pen, the type of entry, the illumination, the size of the milking stalls … not forgetting the key role of “stray voltage”, a common phenomenon when several machines are operating in a limited space … they all count towards an adequate yield from our animals!
You can extend your knowledge about this in the video… as well as much more!
