Short communication: Milking order consistency of dairy cows in large Australian herds

Abstract

We used on-farm records from dairy infrastructure to examine the consistency of the milking order over 150 d in 5 Australian dairy herds that were milking more than 500 cows as a single group. Within a single day the difference in milking order rank position was less than 20 percentage points for 72% of cows. The correlation coefficient comparing milking rank position in the morning and afternoon was 0.72, with the position of cows at the beginning and end of the milking order being more consistent than cows toward the middle of the milking order. Over a period of 150 d, cows with a mean position in the first and last 20% of the milking order maintained their position more consistently than ..