The T4C management software offers a range of reports. One of these reports is ‘Report 56 – Milking – Robot performance’. This article is a deep dive into the functionality and essence of this report.
T4C & InHerd
Lely T4C’s ‘Report 56 – Milking – Robot performance’ gives an overview of the performance of each robot on a daily basis (figure 1). Among other things, you are able to see the free time on the robot; this is mainly important for multiple groups and locations.
In the overview, you can click on the subjects and sort them any way you like. In this article, we will briefly discuss all the subjects as mentioned in figure 1.
• Robot address: describes the robot, for example 101, 102, 103,104.
• Date: the date corresponding to the data.
• Cows milked: the number of cows milked by the robot on the specific date.
• Milk total: the total amount of milk registered at the specific robot on the specific date, including separated milk.
• Separated milk: the total amount of separated milk at the specific robot on the specific date.
• Milk/cow: the average milk yield per cow at the specific robot on the specific date.
• Time milking: actual time the robot spent milking on the specific date (hours: minutes).
• Time milking %: the percentage of time the robot spent that date on milking.
• Time free: actual free time robot had on that date (hours: minutes).
• Time free %: percentage of free time the robot had on that date.
• Milkings/cow: the average number of milkings per cow at the specific robot on the specific date.
• Milk speed: average milk speed per milking per minute.
• Milk speed max.: average maximum milk speed per cow.
• Milkings: the total number of milkings at the specific robot on the specific date.
• Failures: total number of failed milkings.
• Refusals: the total number of refusals at the specific robot on the specific date.
• Dead milk time avg.: average dead milk time per quarter.
• Milk time avg.: average milk time per quarter.
• Conductivity avg.: average conductivity per quarter.
Report 56 can be used to determine (technical) problems by checking the following starting points: dead milk time, milk time, failures and conductivity. It is seen as normal if there are differences between the milk time of the front and rear teats. However, there will be an alarm if:
• there is a difference of 20 seconds between the LF and RF teats;
• there is a difference of 20 seconds between the LR and RR teats.
Figure 2 gives an example of what this alarm looks like in the report:
If there is an attention for the increased milk time and dead milk time, an attention will appear on the attention list on the Dashboard of T4C (see figure 3).
If this attention is visible because of a big difference between the milk time or dead milk time, consider the following causes:
• Are the bleed holes in the bottom of the teat cup open?
If these are closed, use the needle to clean them.
• Leaking or too-short hoses?
• Are the tops of the teat cups ripped?
• Any dirt or moisture in the pulsator?
• Any other reason for vacuum loss in the arm of the milking system?
It is also possible that there are udders that are difficult to milk fully on the left or right side of the udder. Also, the pre-treatment has an influence on the milk time and the dead milk time.
The (renewed) advised settings for pre-treatment by Lely are:
| Old standard | New Standard |
|
2x2 A3, A4 2x4 A5 |
2x3 A3, A4 2x4 A5 2x2 USA pre-treatment |
These settings are advised for the herd. In the T4C management system you can configure different settings per group. This setting can be found at ‘Data entry –> Settings –-> Milking –> Pre-milking -> Number of treatments – Duration per treatment (sec.)’.
