Transitioning dairy cattle from parlor to automatic milking systems

This paper investigated behavioral responses associated with fear when cows first experienced milking in an automatic milking system (AMS), comparing cows that had experienced two different types of training: baseline training involved being moved into an inactive AMS unit to receive a grain reward for 3 days before milking; enhanced training used a grain reward to encourage cows to enter the AMS followed for 10 days before baseline training began.

All 45 cows tested, regardless of training regime, showed evidence of fear when entering the AMS for milking, and fear responses declined over multiple milkings.