TECHNOLOGY EFFICENCY OF VOLUNTARY MILKING SYSTEM

Abstract

The installation of a voluntary milking system – automatic milking robot – leads to numerouschanges in the milking process for example in breeding and feeding technology on the farm. Due to therobotic milking, the biological hazards are less than past. This modern robotic system helps to harmonizethe milking, feeding and relaxing period of the herd, and also makes the compliance with food safetyregulations easier. The payback period of this robotic milking technology is relatively high. The mainobjective of this paper is to find the level of cost changes and the level of benefit changes which is ableto reduce the payback period. The sensitivity analysis is applied to find these levels. Under the properconditions the voluntary milking system is able to increase the competitiveness of dairy farm.

Keywords

• cost-benefit analysis
• sensitivity analysis
• technology adaptation