Provided herein is an automatic teat treatment method and apparatus for carrying out a pre- or post-treatment operation on the teats of an animal. The method and apparatus allow for improved time and resource efficiency in the context of automated teat treatment. The method uses a treatment robot apparatus with a control system, said robot apparatus being capable of carrying a treating device on an arm thereof, and the method comprises the steps of: establishing a start time for said treatment operation, establishing the presence of an animal at a treatment location, and: (i) initiating automatic detection of the spatial teat position of a first one of said teats and (ii) registering the spatial position of said detected teat, and (iii) deriving a dedicated teat-treating action for treating said teat, and (iv) initiating and carrying out the teat-treating action, and (v) repeating said initiating, registering, deriving, and treating steps i-iv once in respect of each successive teat of said animal until all its teats are treated and thereafter retracting the robot arm away from the animal to a retracted position wherein if, after the start time to, a predefined point in time td is passed before any of the preceding steps is completed, the method according to steps i-v is interrupted and a default treating action for treating all remaining untreated teats is derived and carried out by the treatment apparatus and thereafter said robot arm is retracted.
