Influence of milking robot application on cow longevity and amount of somatic cells in milk

The research has been performed in the teaching and research farm, where a part of cows were milked with two milking robots VMS produced by the company De Laval, but other cows - in a separate parlour with side by side 2x10 type milking equipment. For the research, animals that were not rejected due to traumatism or any specific disease were selected. The information on the length of the productive life of the cows was obtained from the management system of the farm and the Latvian Data Centre In the study, we used data from the Latvian Data Centre (LDC) for 173 Holstein black and white (HM) and 391 Latvian brown (LB) cows.the quality of the obtained milk was evaluated according to the number of somatic cells in it that was determined in the result of laboratory analyses. In the research it was stated that for the cows milked with robots the length of the productive life increases by approximately half year. In turn, evaluating according to the amount of somatic cells, it was stated that the obtained milk complies with the requirements of the normative standards. Nevertheless, it cannot be unequivocally ascertained that using milking robots the quality of milk is always higher than using the side-by-side type milking equipment.