For the determination of the occupancy of a milking stall by an animal, in particular a cow, in a rotary milking parlor with a plurality of milking stalls which are disposed on a rotatable milking platform, a process is proposed in which the identification of the animal only takes place after it has entered the milking stall in which it is supposed to be milked. The electric motor further includes power and encoder terminals positioned externally of the motor housing with at least one power terminal being electrically coupled to one of the power brushes and at least one encoder terminal being electrically coupled to one of the encoder brushes. Also, a palmtop computer’s display, memory and processing power can vary considerably.