Milking Process

Hello, everyone! Do you ever wonder how to do the milking process? Now, I will explain you how to do it.

The Milking Process

The milking procedure is done to get maximum milk quality. The milking process should be consistent and cow should be milked at the same time everyday.

There are 4 goals of milking process:

• To produce large quantities of a high quality product for consumers
• Minimize mastitis infections
• Milk clean dry teats
• Minimize stress on both cows and workers (within the parlor)

 Best practices of milking process:

• Minimize stress

We must bring cows to enter the milking area calmly and gently, shouting and yelling cause them excited and stress. The time in the holding pen should be minimize to less than 2 hours total per day. When the cows are stress an adrenaline hormone is released into the blood stream, interfere of the release of the oxytocin from the cows' brain.

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• Wear gloves

Contagious mastitis causing bacteria may live on your hand and be transferred between cows during milking. Because of that reason, milkers' hands should be washed with soap and water, nitrile or latex gloves should be worn before milking. This may help to protect the milkers' skin. Gloves also minimize the spread of contagious mastitis between cows.

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• Clean cows

Keep cows as clean as possible before they enter the milking area. It is easier to clean prior the milking. Remove dirt from teats by hands or with towel (using the water is not suggested). Water is used only to wet teats and not others because using water in parlor results in increased mastitis and higher bacteria levels in milk.

Keep the barn and cows as clean as possible (thedairymom.blogspot.com)

• Fore-strip

It is important to do fore-stripping in the milking process. Milkers can examine the milk from any sign of mastitis including cloudy and watery milk. Fore-strip helps stimulate the teats and encourage milk let down. Effective stimulation helps to increase milk flow rate and reduce milking unit time.

Milk should not stripped in hands or towel because it would encourage the spread of mastitis between teats and towel. Fore-stripping can be accomplished before or after pre-dipping. For adequate stimulation is allowed for 10-20 seconds per cow.

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• Pre-dipping

During pre-dipping three quarters of the teats should be covered. The pre-dipped should be remained on the teats at least 30 seconds before drying.

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• Dry

The teats should be dried with absorb cloth or paper towel. Never use the same towel on two cows.

3 steps to laundry the towels:

- Washing with detergent and sanitizer

- Using hot water above 140 degrees Fahrenheit

- Using a heated drying cycle

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• Attach milking units

The milking units should be attached between 1-1.5 minutes after teats stimulation. Attaching too soon or too late can cause result an excessive milking time or reduce yield.

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• Remove milking units

It can be done manually or with automatic take off/detacher. It is suggested to avoid overmilking which can increase the incidents of liner-slips and left the teats in damage. Adjust automatic take off to ensure they do not stay on too long.

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•  Post-Dip

As soon as possible after the milking units are removed, teats should be dipped with the post-dip. Just like pre-dipping, post-dipping should cover at least three quarters of the teats. Some dairy producers choose spray teats rather than dip. The weakness of spray teats is the opposite part of the teats is not covered.

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This milking process can improve the quality of your dairy.

You can watch it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBgon39usbQ