Ventilation Strategies for Environmental Control of Modern Milking Centers

Effective milking center ventilation is needed to provide comfortable conditions for the operator and the cows alike. Likewise, proper ventilation can help to prevent premature deterioration of building materials and equipment. Milking center designers need to be aware of the need for proper ventilation and incorporate its design into the normal design process. Natural or mechanical ventilation can be used to ventilate milking centers. Mechanical ventilation has advantages over natural ventilation for this application. Control of mechanical ventilation is more reliable and better suited to maintain a quality environment in most instances. A positive ventilation system is preferred for summer conditions and presented in this paper. To meet minimum ventilation requirements in the winter, a neutral system that is balanced between positive pressure heat transfer fans located in the mechanical room with cupola fans operating in the reverse direction seems to be working well in practice