No dirty to feed
Because feed is in the bunk, there is no dirty contamination to feed in the barn. This is important and keeps the biosecurity in high level. Lay-out can be planned so that all the cow traffic is in the middle of barn and feeding is outside.

What might be the reason for no need for feed refusal in bunk feeding? Feed stays fresh when being in the outside wall and cows can´t sort it so well. In our present outside feed wall system we have the rubber belt mounted to turning wall over the feed after delivering. Bunk design itself prevents it because feed is generally in very small narrow area. Another thing for feed refusal might be in flat feed lanes, that when cows toss feed towards the feed table, feed gets barn air and when feed is pushed back, it also might get some dirty from feed table.

Cow-comfort issues
When feed is in the right dimensioned bunk, it´s always available for cows. Cows don´t need to reach the feed and push their necks against the feed rail. Hard reaching of feed is also not good for cow`s legs.

 

 

No feed refusal

In the beginning main point was just to save expensive building room, when building outside feeding system. People were afraid of, how to clean the bunk, because there is kind of universal advise that there must be feed refusal, otherwise cows are hungry and are not using all their potential. This fear was noted not to become reality. Even in the first outside feeding barn farmer said that there really is not a need to clean the nice and smooth stainless steel bunk at all, just taking out all the stones and wooden parts now and then. This kind of note You get from farmers who have this system. Of course it means that You must not put already spoiled feed into the bunk.  Normally these farms feed once a day. Production results are surely at least in the same level compared to other farms with tmr-feeding.

 

Robotic milking layout
In robotic milking systems, when having more than 1 robot unit, tendence is to have robot room (with 2 or 4 robots) in the middle of barn and feeding tables in both sides. Normally this is done with two 4-5 meters wide feed alleys, instead they could do it with outside feeding system and save 6-8 metres building width.

 

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