Milking Technology Laboratory

The Milking Technology Laboratory at the UC Davis, Veterinary Medicine Teaching and Research Center consists of a dairy barn and a laboratory building. The dairy barn, covering 2250 square feet, has eight stanchion milking units with a double 3-inch milk line and a single 4-inch pulsation line.

The laboratory is housed in a 1950 square foot building, which contains a vacuum pump, two test bench areas and vacuum lines connecting the pump to the test equipment and to the milking machines in the dairy barn. The pump currently installed is a 15 horsepower Beco Model 60 lobe pump, equipped with an AC tech variable frequency drive controller. When running at variable frequency, the pump controller can be adjusted to provide a more rapid or less rapid response to a desired vacuum tolerance, as in the experimental plan. The pump can also be set to run at constant speeds up to its maximum, thus simulating a conventional (non-variable drive) pump.

In the current configuration, vacuum is regulated by a Sentinal 350 controller when the pump is running conventionally. Under variable drive, the controller continues to operate, providing some additional stability, and is also specially equipped to serve as the vacuum sensor that feeds back to the drive speed controller.

Test equipment in the lab includes a variety of valves that can be operated manually to introduce air leaks, and three Sentinel air injector valves equipped with electric timers that can be programmed to introduce leaks into the system repeatedly over long periods of time. The automatic valves are used to simulate, in the lab, the types of air leaks that would occur normally during milking on a dairy.

Vacuum levels can be measured at various positions along a pipeline running along the back of a 9-foot bench space. The
vacuum controller is located at one end of the bench. For measuring vacuum levels, the lab has two Digimet 200 vacuum/pulsation meters, two Sentinel vacuum recorders, and a computerized data acquisition system capable of making rapid repeated measurements and capturing them in a computer file (Keithly Data Acquisition Systems).

Measurements of electrical consumption for the proposed experiments will be made with a Kiethly KW220-3AV kilowatt-hour/wattmeter.

For tests of milk claws, liners, hoses, and sensors, the lab has a Jenny-Lynn udder simulator and a test bench with two custom built udder simulators. The test bench allows for experimental variation of a wide variety of factors such as lift, milk flow rate, and hose lengths when performing tests of equipment on the pathway from the cow to the milk line. Vacuum sensors can be easily deployed at locations of interest in the test bench equipment.

The Milking Technology Laboratory is a collaborative effort between the VMTRC faculty and Dr. Lionel Brazil. Dr. Brazil is a graduate of the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and currently serves as president of Western Dairies Inc., a research and development firm that consults on dairy managment, mastitis control and equipment development.