Effects of milking frequency on lying down and getting up behaviour in dairy cows

The objective of this study was to investigate if cows milked twice per day have more difficulty lying down and getting up and spend less time lying than cows milked three times per day. Seventeen cows of the Swedish Red and White Cattle Breed were studied, seven of which were milked twice daily (2M) and ten were milked three times (3M) daily. They were kept in individual cubicles, that were closed in the rear end with a rope. They had free access to a mixture of silage, hay and concentrate. The individual cows were video-recorded for 24h every fourth week, starting four weeks after calving for four times. The 2M cows stood significantly longer, 128.11min, than the 3M cows, 64.88min, (P<0.01) during the 4h before morning milking. The 2M cows also had a tendency for longer duration of standing rumination (P=0.059) as well as significantly more bouts of standing rumination (P<0.01) during these hours than the 3M cows. The cows in the 3M group spent less time on the getting up movement (P<0.05) during the 4h before morning milking. The distribution of the lying bouts during these 4h differed significantly between the groups, where the 3M cows had fewer lying bouts shorter than 15min and more lying bouts longer than 90min. The results indicate that milking three times a day contributes to increased comfort in high-producing dairy cows.