Non-contact thermometry in the milking stopping control system

Abstract

The paper deals with the detection of “idle milking” times for individual quarters of the udder in a group of dairy cows (randomly selected) in a parallel 2 × 12 milking parlour. A non-contact laser thermometer Raynger ST-6 was used to measure temperatures of the inner surfaces of liners instantly after milking. In a group of 12 dairy cows, the minimum liner temperature after milking was 15.3°C, the maximum temperature was 28.9°C. It follows from the regression correlation that an increase in the cooling time by 1 second decreases the temperature of the liner inner surface by 0.0324°C. On average, fore left quarters were milked idle 2.55 min, fore right 2.21 min, rear left 0.24 min, rear right 0.56 min. Differences in the temperatures of liner inner surfaces determined between fore and rear udder quarters were statistically significant; the negative statistically significant correlation coefficient was recorded between the total milking time and the temperature of liners in fore quarters (r = –0.7802⁺⁺, resp. r = –0.6058⁺).