Milking technique and the bovine teat condition. A literature overview

The bovine teat condition is not only affected by milking and housing conditions, but also by technical parameters of both the milking machine and the milking process. Because of the association between insufficient teat condition and deterioration of the udder health, the technical parameters should be adjusted in such a way as to minimize milking-related deterioration of the teat condition. It is difficult to improve the teat condition by an optimised adjustment of technical milking parameters due to complex interactions among the variables. The present paper shows the current status of knowledge by means of a literature overview.