Effects of concentrate location on the behavior and production of dairy cows milked in a free-traffic automated milking system
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The objective of this study was to determine whether the amount of concentrate allowance in an automated milking system (AMS) affects partial mixed ration (PMR) sorting behavior, milking activity, and production of lactating dairy cows fed isocaloric diets. Fifteen primiparous Holstein cows were used in a crossover design with 28-d periods, including 14 d of adaptation and 14 d of data collection. The cows were housed in a freestall pen with free-traffic access to the AMS. Treatments consisted of a higher-concentrate PMR (H-PMR) with a pelleted concentrate allowance of 3.0 kg/d on a dry matter (DM) basis in the AMS, or a lower-concentrate PMR (L-PMR) with a pelleted concentrate allowance of 6.0 kg/d in the AMS. As designed, cows on the L-PMR had greater AMS concentrate intake (6.3 vs. 3.1 kg/d of DM) compared with the H-PMR. The standard deviation for mean concentrate intake among days increased from 0.38 to 1.0 kg/d with greater targeted AMS concentrate intake. When fed the L-PMR diet, PMR intake was reduced compared with when cows were fed the H-PMR diet (17.1 vs. 19.1 kg/d of DM). The reduction in PMR intake was compensated for by greater AMS concentrate intake; thus, cows on the L-PMR had greater total dry matter intake (DMI; 23.6 vs. 22.3 kg/d). Cows sorted against long (>19 mm) and fine (<4 mm) PMR particle fractions, and in favor of medium (8 to 19 mm) and short (4 to 8 mm) PMR fractions when on the H-PMR treatment, but only sorted against the medium and in favor of the short PMR fractions on the L-PMR treatment. PMR eating rate and total time spent eating PMR did not differ significantly between the 2 treatments; however, meal size tended to be larger when cows were fed the H-PMR compared with the L-PMR (2.2 vs. 2.1 kg DM/meal). Cows tended to spend 30.8 min/d more time lying down when fed the L-PMR. On the L-PMR treatment, cows tended to have more voluntary AMS visits (5.9 vs. 4.6 visits/d), were fetched less (0.1 vs. 0.5 times daily), and had a greater milking frequency (3.5 vs. 3.0 milkings/d) compared with when they were on the H-PMR treatment. However, milk yield was not affected by treatment. These data suggest that allocating a greater proportion of total dietary concentrate to the AMS, in a free-traffic setup, may improve milking activity and decrease the need for fetching, as well as promoting greater amounts of and maintaining consistency in total dry matter consumption.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".