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A total of four feeding experiments were designed to study the response of dairy cows to two different milking systems:<br />a conventional auto-tandem milking parlor, and an automatic milking system (AMS, milking robot). The results were analyzed<br />independent of the different feeding factors, because they were the same for all animals in both milking systems.<br />The results, separately analyzed for first-lactating and multiparous cows, can be summarized as follows:<br />First-lactating cows visited the automatic milking system more often (2.6 up to 3.5 times per day) than multiparous cows<br />(2.5 up to 2.9 times per day), but the increased milking frequency did not positively affect milk yield. Although multiparous<br />cows had a substantially higher FCM-yield (29.4 kg/day on average) than heifers (26.0 kg/day on average), they only went<br />to the automatic milking system on average 2.6 times per day. The amount of time needed for first-lactating and multiparous<br />cows to get used to the automatic milking system did not show a difference. They learned to visit the automatic<br />milking system voluntarily after one week. During the course of lactation, differences in milking frequency were detected<br />between first-lactating and multiparous cows. The milking frequency of multiparous cows was observed to be almost constant<br />during the entire lactation, on average 2.5 times per day. However, first-lactating cows increase the milking frequency<br />from the beginning (2.3 times per day) to the end of lactation (2.9 times per day), when the lactation is divided into three<br />periods of 100 days each. The automatic milking system affects uncorrected milk yield positively. The increase of milk yield<br />amounted up to 5.7% for primiparous cows in contrast to the multiparous cows with an increase of milk yield up to 3.1%.<br />But all these differences proved not to be significant. The FCM-yield for primiparous cows (25.8 kg/day and 26.0 kg/day)<br />and for multiparous cows (30.3 kg/day and 29.4 kg/day) were lower than the uncorrected milk yield, because the milk fat<br />content was significantly lower for cows milked in the AMS (4.03% in the AMS compared to 4.36% in the milking parlor).<br />But there were no differences in the FCM-yield and the milk fat content between first-lactating and multiparous cows.