Transitioning dairy cows to automatic milking: predictive effects of training on post transition AMS use
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Dairy cows transitioning to automatic milking systems (AMS) must learn to visit the unit voluntarily; cows that fail to do so must be fetched repeatedly, increasing the risk of negative human-animal interactions. Delayed visits also carry welfare consequences, including udder engorgement and reduced lying and feeding times. Understanding why some cows adapt poorly, and whether they can be identified early, is important for developing management strategies for the transition period. We tested whether positive reinforcement training (PRT) could ease a herd-wide transition to AMS, and whether individual responses to training predicted subsequent AMS use. We enrolled 181 lactating Holstein cows housed in four pens, each with one AMS unit. Before the transition, cows received either baseline training alone (control; n = 71) or baseline training preceded by PRT (n = 110). Treatment was randomised at the cow level in one pen and assigned at the pen level in the remaining three. During PRT, cows were given one opportunity daily to approach and enter the AMS, with pelleted concentrate as an incentive. After each session, cows were scored on the furthest stage of engagement reached: Step 1 (no interaction), Step 2 (approached but did not enter), or Step 3 (entered or walked through). Cow behaviour was monitored for four weeks following the transition, with the daily maximum interval between AMS visits as the primary outcome variable. We tested the effect of PRT in the randomised pen, then examined whether training progression predicted subsequent AMS use across all PRT-trained cows. PRT had no detectable effect on maximum visit interval in the randomised pen (difference between control and treatment: 8.3 ± 39.2 min; 95% CI: -70.7 to 87.3 min). Among PRT-trained cows, however, those that engaged the least had the longest maximum intervals between visits: Step 1 (n = 6; 877.0 ± 50.4 min), Step 2 (n = 50; 720.0 ± 20.5 min), and Step 3 (n = 54; 593.9 ± 17.7 min). Individual responses to PRT may provide an early indicator of how well a cow will behaviourally adjust to AMS milking, allowing those at greater risk of a difficult transition to be identified before it begins. More broadly, these findings suggest that understanding AMS adaptation in dairy cows may require looking beyond the overall effects of training interventions or broad behavioural traits, and instead focusing on the behaviours cows express towards the technology itself as a more direct indicator of adaptation.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| 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".