Abstract:

Many dairy herds use automatic milking stations (AMS) and in large herds, cows usually have access to two or more AMS, and consequently must make a choice between them whenever they go for milking. For this study, we assume that the degree of using the same milking box is an expression of preference. We used a total of 4,665 cows from a Holstein and a Jersey cohort covering 12 commercial dairy herds in Denmark to estimate heritability, repeatability and individual level correlations between preference choice score (PCS), Time_profile (preference for specific clock hours) and associated milking and behaviour traits. The average PCS was 0.43 (Holstein) and 0.41 (Jersey), respectively. Both PCS and Time_profile had low heritability (0.07/0.11 Holstein, 0.13/0.04 Jersey) and moderate repeatability (0.47/0.40 Holstein and 0.50/0.42 Jersey) and were weakly correlated to each other (Holstein 0.18 and Jersey 0.17) and weakly correlated to milk yield (ri range 0.0 to -0.10).