John Edwards

Citation

Thesis Title
Efficient milking systems for pastoral dairy farms

Read article at Massey Research Online:

The process of harvesting milk is a time consuming task on dairy farms. This important task affects all parts of the business from people to cows, milk quality, and capital investment. It is likely that herd sizes will continue to increase, putting pressure on scarce labour resources. Therefore, an efficient milking system is important for farm profitability. Mr Edwards benchmarked current levels of milking efficiency on commercial dairy farms and identified factors that influenced performance. He evaluated strategies for reducing the time it took to milk individual cows and measured the effects of overmilking on teat-end condition. Mr Edwards modelled these effects to determine their influence on milking efficiency and used the results to indicate which dairy offered the greatest labour saving per dollar invested.

Supervisors
Professor Nicolas Lopez-Villalobos
Dr Jenny Jago
Dr Bernadette O'Brien