Livestock of pastoralists provide meat, milk, blood, dung and are useful for transportation purposes. In semi-arid and arid areas with very low precipitation the herder must often walk far distances to feed the livestock. This affects the animals? production, especially of milk. Previous studies have investigated how to improve milk production in terms of Milking strategies in cattle.

An automatic milking (AM) system should be combined with some form of controlled cow traffic to minimize the time spend on fetching cows to milking and to increase the milking frequency. By restricting the hours spent on pasture per day you optimise the AM system use during pasture period. A reason for this is becuase cows do not return to the stable for milking during night which cause that the milking unit stands empty those hours. In organic production it is required that the cows should be able to graze a certain amount of daily dry matter (DM) intake on the pasture. In the county of Dalarna where the farm is located the yield of the pasture is about 3000 kg DM per grazing season and hectar.This means that the pasture area should be 14,25 hectare to 57 milking cows.

In Kenya the Maasai pastoralists have based their livelihoods on dairy production and the production goal is to maintain a sufficient milk supply throughout the year. The pastoral dairy production has two vital characteristics; breeding and milking. Traditionally, breeding is the men?s responsibility, while milking is the duty of women. Depending on this partition of chores between men and women, they also have different management routines, ambitions and strategies regarding the milk production.

Approximately 20% of the milk within the udder of a cow is stored in the cistern and immediately available for milk removal, while activation of the milk ejection reflex is required for removing the remaining milk stored in the alveolar compartment. The aim of this literature review is to describe, evaluate and consider implications of the three different suckling activities that the calf displays during a suckling bout. In terms of milking, these phases are represented by pre-stimulation, stimulation during milking and post-stimulation. Pre-stimulation is commonly performed in order to induce the milk ejection reflex, whereby the hormone oxytocin is released and the alveoli in the secretory tissue are contracted. Time requirements regarding pre-stimulation must be considered in relation to lactation stage and milking interval.

Today automatic milking systems (AMS) are growing in popularity. In these systems the cows are loose and have to get to the robot and the feed on their own. The cows ranking in this system affect their welfare. In this study data from seven years in an AMS was used and analysed. The aim was to investigate how ranking could affect the behaviour of the cows at milking and at feeding.

Today, there are more than 12 000-14 000 farms worldwide using an automatic milking system (AMS). Studies have shown that transition to AMS affects the udder health of cows adversely, recognized primarily as elevated somatic cell counts. There are several reasons for this, for example the greater variation in milking frequency seen in AMS. On one hand, short milking intervals may lead to bad teat condition of the cows due to the stress the milking procedure exposes the teats to. Too long milking intervals, on the other hand, seem to predispose for milk leakage, which is, in turn, a risk factor for the development of mastitis.

Automatic milking systems (AMS) provide the opportunity for less manual labour and an increased milking frequency. But in order to reach an optimal milking frequency a well-functioning cow traffic is crucial. There are many factors affecting cow traffic but one factor that has not been studied thoroughly yet is the effect of different light intensities during the night, 22.00 h to 05.00 h. Therefore the aim of this study was to determine the effect of different light intensities during the night on number of selection gate passages (GP), milking frequency and milk yield. The study was conducted as a Latin square were three light intensities were applied: LOW (11 ± 3 lux), INT (33 ± 1 lux) and HIGH (74 ± 6 lux), in three different herds.

The purpose with this study was to investigate how the behaviour and physiological parameters differ between high ranked and low ranked cows, and between cows in an automatic milking system verses conventional milking parlour. The study was carried out at the Kungsängen research Centre, Department of animal nutrition an management, Swedish University of Agriculture Sciences, Uppsala. Twelve cows, the six highest and the six lowest in social rank were selected from the automatic milking system for the experiment. Ten cows, the five highest and five lowest in social rank were selected from the conventional system. Blood samples were taken during milking and resting.

Habituation to an automatic milking system (AMS) for cows in their first lactation differs from habituation to other milking systems. In AMS the cows are supposed to visit the milking station (MS) voluntarily. The milking takes place individually during the whole day, except when the milking system is cleaned. Milking is carried out without any human survey. The aim of the study was to describe the cow?s introduction in AMS in their first lactation.

Automatic milking systems (AMS) have been in commercial use since 1992 and have since 1998 increased a lot. The objective of this study has been to examine the development of udder health on farms converting to AMS. The study also included a comparison of how udder health developed depending on how farms handled cows with mastitis. This was because farms choose to either milk cows with mastitis in a separate barn or in the milking robot. Other studies on udder health on commercial farms have shown that somatic cell count increases both among individual cows and in the bulk milk when converting to an AMS. No differences between before and after converting to AMS in the proportion of cows treated for mastitis can be found in the literature.

In modern dairy production the milking frequency is increased in some herds due to introducing of automatic milking systems or the farmers decision to milk high producing dairy cows more than two times a day. With more frequent milkings the milk yield increases while the content of fat and protein decreases. However, how the composition of protein is influenced is not fully evaluated. The purpose of this study was therefore to see if a higher milking frequency had any impact on the milk production and especially on the protein composition. This study was conducted as a half udder experiment.

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between sleep, photoperiod, milk yield and hormones connected to milk formation. Variations of prolactin (PRL) and Insulin-Like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) in plasma were measured during two different light programs. The light programs consisted of either 24 hours of light (L24:D0) or four hours of light and 20 hours of darkness (L4:D20). Five cows of the Swedish Red breed were used in a cross-over experiment and each light program consisted of five days. Milk yield was measured at every milking and milk samples were analyzed with regard to fat, lactose and protein.

Developments in milk production are heading towards fewer but larger herds where the milking process is often fully automated. Automatic milking systems were launched in the 1990?s and in the year 2010 the Automatic Milking Rotary (AMR) was introduced. As a rule there are no supervision personnel present during the milking event in systems with automatic milking. This means that there is a risk that cows can be incompletely milked in one or more udder quarters, for example if the robots fail in attaching the milking cups or if the cow kicks off the milking unit.

Milkability or ease of milking, has higher importance today for Swedish dairy cattle producers after the introduction of milking parlours and automatic milking systems. Milkability is the cow?s ability to quickly milk out and be completely milked. There are several measures of milkability available. Today the farmer measures the traits subjectively in relation to the conformation scoring of the cow 30-270 days after her first calving.

The Swedish Animal Welfare Act say that all milking cows must have access to pasture in summer time. That was a gift to Astrid Lindgren o her 80th birthday from the Swedish Government. Sweden is a predecessor in animal welfare, but how well do we live up to these big expectations? In this thesis I will examine how well the pasture for milking cows works. I have been interviewing farmers with milking cows and people in the business. I have also been searching information on Internet, and using the library of Alnarp. Cows that are kept on pasture are exposed to different kind of parasites, but on the other hand they run a smaller risk to getting acetonemi, pareses and udder infection. Veterinary Pierre Nordmark means that cows on pasture are more healthy then cows kept inside all summer.