Automated Milking Systems (AMS) and dairy cows.

Abstract Automatic milking systems(AMS)are trending upwards in the USA and, although technologies such as box robots have been in use for more than 27 years in Europe, the adoption rates have been slower in the USA. Some of the reasons may include higher proportion of large farms than countries that have more rapidly adopted AMS technology and producer uncertainty about adopting the new technology (Jacobs and Siegford et al., 2012). One of the primary obstacles to implementing AMS is the higher capital cost of the milking equipment and facilities compared to conventional milking technology. However, trends to future reductions in availability of milking labor and potential increase in labor costs are influencing the increase in AMS adoption, as well as more interest in precision dairy farming. To date, there has not been a published scoping review summarizing the literature related to automatic milking systems in dairy cows' operations. A scoping review on this topic could be useful for identifying specific topics with enough depth of literature to support a systematic review and to identify research gaps.