According to the latest data from the Chamber of Agriculture and Forestry of Slovenia and based on the census of dairy cow barns in 2021, almost 73% of Slovenian dairy farmers have cows housed in barns with tied-in housing system. On dairy farms with tied-in housing system, milking is done either in milking buckets or via a pipeline milking system. On farms with free-walk stalls, robotic milking is becoming more popular as labour for daily milking is becoming scarce. In the first part of the thesis, different housing systems for dairy cows and milking systems connected to them were presented. The second part of the thesis presented the results of a survey conducted on 129 dairy farms as part of the research project "Development of sustainable barn construction concepts – for dairy cows". With the help of this survey, we obtained information about the housing system for dairy cows, calves and young cattle on these dairy farms. The results showed that many dairy cow barns are outdated, there is an unfavourable micro-climate in the barn, there is not enough space for all animals, and a lot of manual labour is still required. Breeders face many constraints in terms of using mechanization and simplifying daily work. There are also more and more farms that in recent years have invested in the modernization and construction of animal and environmentally friendly barns that make the farmer's work much easier.
|