New Strategy to Reduce Water Consumption and Waste Generation During the Mechanical Milking Process in a Small Cattle Sector

Dairy cattle farming is an activity of great economic importance in Brazil; however, this activity presents high water consumption and volume of waste generated. The objective in the present work was to measure water consumption and waste generation during mechanical milking, in order to promote rational initiatives for the process. The farm property showed the consumption of 64.76% of the whole used water per day and generation of 35.24% of waste-water in the milking process. After orientation, the average coefficient of water consumption in the cattle sector decreased to 3.2 liters with a daily production of approximately 550 liters of milk and an average water consumption of 1,764.83 liters per day. The implementation of equipment and adoption of mitigation measures was associated with a significant reduction in water waste.