Abstract: Cow flow is one of the important settings in farms using automatic milking systems, and the main purpose is to improve herd management efficiency and achieve the best balance between cow health and comfort and production efficiency. This paper mainly described the two modes of cow flow setup-- Free flow and Guided flow, and focused on the analysis of cow flow from the aspects of definition, advantages, core principles, auxiliary intelligent equipment, etc. It also analyzed the application and effect of Guided flow in automatic milking system farms,and shared the advantages of Guided flow in farms through the cases of some typical farms in Europe, America and China.

Key words: voluntary milking system, guided flow, modern smart farms, herd management