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Milk is one of the most important animal products for human consumption. The demand on dairy production is to produce high quality milk with a composition corresponding to the consumers demands.
During the last decades milk production in many parts of the world
has gone through a revolution, a revolution which is still in progress. Milk is produced from fewer, but higher yielding cows. Structural changes have caused a decrease in number of dairy farms, while they have increased in size and use of high technology. This high technology has become an ordinary tool for the farmer.
The great improvements in dairy production are due to an interaction
among the separate advances from the various disciplines. Genetic
progress has resulted in increased lactation production from about
4000 kg 30 years ago to an average production today between 7000 and 12000 kg milk. Increased knowledge about the importance of proper management and feeding for optimal milk production has contributed as well.
Milking is a central part in dairy management to optimise production
capacity and milk quality. Milking is not only a procedure where the
milk is drained from the teats, it is an event where many physiological mechanisms are activated in the body of the lactating cow, events which influence mechanisms regulating production capacity, milk composition, feed intake and animal behaviour. The possibility to interact with the biology of the cow in order to produce milk with high quality and optimal yield is therefore partly through the milking technique and milking routines. Milking is also an occasion where the farmer often has the opportunity to control and observe the cow.
The aim of this booklet is to introduce the reader to the complex but
also very fascinating subject of milk extraction. We will learn to
understand how the lactating animal is functioning from a physiological point of view and see how the technique has succeeded to meet the biological demands from the cow.
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