Review of Literature on Teat and Udder Cleaning in Automatic Milking Systems

Milk quality parameters were recorded for United States dairy farms utilizing automatic milking (AM) from August 2000 to June 2003. Additional farms were admitted to the study as they began operation, so that the full data set includes 12 AM farms. Somatic cell count (SCC) and total bacterial count (TBC) data was analyzed and compared to corresponding data from a cohort of conventional farms in Wisconsin as well as data from European AM installations. The geometric mean SCC was 268,000 cells/ml and geometric mean TBC was 13,300 cfu/ml for the entire data set. The first major objective of this study was to assess seasonal variations in milk quality on AM farms, also making a comparison to data from conventional farms. The second was to assess changes in the quality of milk from AM installations as the amount of time the system had been in operation increased. A clear and significant seasonal effect was evident for the SCC data, with higher values observed during the summer months (July, August, and September). There was no significant difference in SCC between AM farms and the cohort of conventional farms. There was some evidence of a seasonal effect on TBC. TBC of milk from AM farms was found to be lower than that from the cohort of conventional farms. There is some evidence that both SCC and TBC decrease as the amount of time a farm utilizing AM increases.