ASSESSMENT OF KEY ASPECTS OF TECHNOLOGIES AND COW FARMING FOR MILK PRODUCTION IN LATVIA

In Latvia, the dairy industry was ranked second with 24.1 % in the distribution of agricultural final products in 2014, and more than a third of all commercial agricultural farms were linked to this industry. A combination of the abolishment of the EU milk quota system and the Russian embargo created challenges, which had a significant impact on the agricultural sector. Therefore, it is important to examine various problems related to cow farming and farm technologies, as they are essential for competitive milk production from every cow. It has been found that the key standard solutions, which determine the successful performance of dairy farms, are cow breeds and their potential, conditions and technologies for cow farming, cow diets and cow milking. An examination of 74 dairy farms of various sizes in the entire territory of Latvia revealed that the highest performance results (the highest milk yields per cow) were observed for large farms that kept cows unstanchioned in their cowsheds (the loose-housing system) with no grazing period, and mostly two technologies were used in milking the cows: the herringbone milking system and the carousel milking system. Milking three times a day was practised mostly by farms using the carousel milking system, thus achieving higher milk yields per cow.