Autograssmilk

Last changed: 20 February 2024

Dairy cows on their way to pasture. Photo.

On January 1st 2013 an EU project called AUTOGRASSMILK was initiated. The project is coordinated by Ireland and the other partner countries are France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden. Within the project there are two partners from each country, one is a research organization and the other partner is an SME association which represents the end users of the research results, i.e. the farmers. The home page of the project gives the following information regarding the objectives and the project:

AUTOGRASSMILK is a joint research project for the benefit of SME Associations, which objective is to develop and implement improved sustainable farming systems that integrate the grazing of dairy cows with automatic milking (AM) which are appropriate to the different approaches to dairy farming to be found in the different regions in Europe.

It will be achieved by:

1. Develop optimum feeding strategies for dairy cows incorporating grazed grass and AM for various production systems in Europe

2. Optimize the integration of AM with cow grazing using new technologies

3. Increase the sustainability of integrated grazing and AM technologies

4. Develop tools that will allow dairy farmers to optimize economic efficiency when combining grazing with AM systems

5. Continuously disseminate new technology to end-users in a form that is easily accessible and locally adapted to improve farm efficiency.

The Swedish research organization is the Department of Animal Nutrition and Management at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and the Swedish SME association is Växa Sverige. The Department of Animal Nutrition and Management will conduct research at the University research barn to study the optimal proportion of pasture in the diet in intensive milk production systems and compare the Swedish Red breed and the Swedish Holstein breed with regard to performance and adaptation to the automatic milking system in combination with pasture. Furthermore, studies will be performed in an Automatic Milking Rotary system (AMR™ – DeLaval) with the objective to give guidelines to producers who wish to combine AMR with grazing. Växa Sverige AB will collect farm data and perform economic calculations on the economy of different management alternatives when automatic milking is combined with pasture and grazing.