Farmer Jan...

[sstterry]

@sstterry , I am not versed in the different milk marketing areas... other than farmers telling me that this area is predominantly for fluid milk sales, and that the areas in the northern central states is predominantly cheese and processing milk. Other than that I really am not sure what is what or where. The milk checks I see are from the milk companies that the farmers sell to, and that is where I get my milk prices from... If I can remember, I will ask one of my dairyman about how they determine all that...

I know how prices are established in Marketing Orders, I was just curious about the farmers outside of the Marketing Orders. You are right, Orders 5 and 7 are primarily fluid milk, and they are also surplus Orders so a lot of the milk from these areas gets shipped out West, ect.

 

[farmerjan]

Farmerjan, That is an excellent article. You did marvelous!! Thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge with us as I greatly enjoyed reading it. It took you a long time to get that all down, and it is very important knowledge for all of us to know.

I had to chop your article off as it said it was to long to include it all.

I had to chop off a bunch as it said it was over 10000 characters and I took off at least 3 long paragraphs as it was.
Thanks for the compliment... I get teased (LOL) about my long winded responses sometimes...

 

[Chuckie]

I wish they would hold your article at the top for Knowledge as they have some of the others articles. This was a special read for me. New people coming by need to see that and it totally changes my thinking now as I never knew any of this. Shows that I can still learn new things like an old dog or horse. You are so smart Farmerjan!!!

This has been one of the most informative articles that has been written. It tells me of why a Dairy Farmer may sell me a good cow. It gives me insight on what questions to ask if I am wanting to add her to the herd as a nurse cow. Where and what problems does she have when she passes a higher cell count. Is it a fluke in her system, or is she carrying a disease not good for my herd?

But so much knowledge for the people that grab that carton of milk off the shelf from the store. WONDERFUL!!

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

FarmerJan. What about the milk with too high an SCC to sell and must be poured out. Can it be pasteurized and fed to calves?

 

[farmerjan]

There are a couple of dairies that I test that do use their high scc milk for calves and a couple have put in pasteurizers, just for the calf milk. It saves them alot of money on milk replacer and makes use of the milk that might otherwise go down the drain.

 

[greybeard]

I am not able to like these posts enough times to do them justice. I am NOT afraid of drinking pasteurized milk. I drink it daily and as a kid (until I went into the service) I drank no iced tea and insisted on milk every meal. Drove my mother nuts but I liked milk and did not like the taste of tea. It's a good thing my father was the same way. Mother & my 4 siblings got the tea and dad and I drank milk.

It has been a very long time tho, since I drank any raw milk and not often then. Late 50s if I remember right.

But, you didn't tell us how you got into this type work to begin with.....

Now, do I understand the processing correctly, (after you do your magic) that most of the time the processors remove all the butterfat from bulk milk, then add back whatever butterfat it takes to make it 1%, 2% or skim, or whole (which really isn't) 'whole' milk?

And that retail milk has virtually zero cream content?

 

[GoWyo]

I am not able to like these posts enough times to do them justice. I am NOT afraid of drinking pasteurized milk. I drink it daily and as a kid (until I went into the service) I drank no iced tea and insisted on milk every meal. Drove my mother nuts but I liked milk and did not like the taste of tea. It's a good thing my father was the same way. Mother & my 4 siblings got the tea and dad and I drank milk.

It has been a very long time tho, since I drank any raw milk and not often then. Late 50s if I remember right.

But, you didn't tell us how you got into this type work to begin with.....

Now, do I understand the processing correctly, (after you do your magic) that most of the time the processors remove all the butterfat from bulk milk, then add back whatever butterfat it takes to make it 1%, 2% or skim, or whole (which really isn't) 'whole' milk?

And that retail milk has virtually zero cream content?

Kind of like the main brands of peanut butter. Squeeze out all the peanut oil and sell it and then add palm kernel oil and sugar back in.

 

[farmerjan]

As for the milk processing, I do believe that they "remove" the butterfat and add back in whatever percent milk they are bottling... Milk used to be standard 3.5% for whole milk but it was dropped to 3.25% awhile back... So, for farms shipping milk of 4.0% fat right out of the cows, no matter how much they are paid for butterfat, the milk processing companies are making more money just by having the "whole milk" percentage being lowered and they are getting more off the top right there; having more butterfat to make everything else with like cottage cheese, sour cream, you name it...

I milked cows in CT after I got divorced... moved to Va and waitressed and started milking on a dairy down here... milked full time on a couple farms for several years. Learned to do AI and did that part-time as a relief tech... was milking full time and waitressing on the side, and had a real bad car wreck in 1989.... C-2 fracture, tore up my right hand... head trauma fractured skull... 70 stitches to put my scalp back together .... drs advised not going back into a situation where I could damage my hand again as they might not be able to put it back together if I got kicked and broke more up... actually tore up the tendons and muscle in the hand.... so I went back to waitressing full time and had applied for a milk testing job but it was only part-time and I needed benefits... which I had with the waitressing job at Wintergreen resorts... not long after, they called me from the local DHIA affiliate, they had a tester going out for surgery and he would be out for at least 4-6 months... would I be interested...and I said only if I could do it around my full time waitressing job... which was flexible since I worked in the banquet dept... You only had to be "part-time" to qualify for benefits.... so they said they would only give me about 15 herds that I could work around it... they farmed out some of his other herds to other testers also... I did 15 herds in 17 days and thought, I don't think I like this job... learning was fast and intense...he was so far behind in his testing due to his physical limitations and the herds needed to be "caught up".....and on top of that farmers do not like change and having a new to them tester was not well received by some.. but they had no choice.. it was me or not get tested ..... but then after the trial by fire.... I got into a bit of a routine and farmers and I mostly all got along pretty well... At least I had been familiar with testing as he had tested on a couple herds I had milked for several years before...
Then he was out for more than 6 months and they asked if I could keep on and I said I would for another month, but it was getting into busy winter ski season and I usually went into one of the restaurants up there for winter....and then after 8 months they asked if I wanted to keep on testing, and I said only if it was a full time position and I got benefits... at the time full time consisted of 15 herds minimum... and 1500 cows... so you had a few small herds and a few bigger herds to average it out...

That was in 1991.... and I am still here.... things have changed from the 2 consecutive milking to 1 milking when we got into the computers.... which they were starting when I started testing but I learned the paper way in the beginning... went to 20 herds or 2000 cows as minimum... then with herds getting bigger and some new "rules" concerning how to define full and part time work with the govt regulations.... we had to keep track of the time we put in for a whole month at every dairy... travel time, set up equipment, actual milking time, time on computer to input info, and they came up with a formula for what full time was and assigned it work units.... this is not something that is your average 8-5 job kind of things...

As herds sold out, you lost work units...unless there was another herd you could put on test... testing plans changed and some farmers went to owner sampling which they do the "in barn" work of taking samples etc... all you do is drop off meters, pick up samples and do the computer recording... send out the samples.... alot less time and you could do a couple owner sampler farms while in another barn actually testing if you had enough meters or if some of the farms had their own sampling system... the more advanced farms with more electronics also usually had their own samplers to use so there was less set up and no waiting for the wash systems to tear down equipment afterwards...
Many farms test every 6-8 weeks now or at their own choosing... it is no longer a strict program as was first set up... It has become more and more for the farmers benefit rather than a defined requirement... It has never been a requirement by any govt program... but often lenders required it as a way to be able to monitor the farms actual productivity and as a lending basis...
I was losing my full time status right when I turned 65 so it worked out pretty perfect for me... went on Medicare in Sept... lost full time status the end of Dec due to fewer herds and not being able to meet the work unit requirement.... started my SS in Jan of the next year so was not hemmed in by the lower allowance for outside income affecting any SS I received...

And still doing it because nowadays, you can't find people to do this because they can make soooo much more working at other jobs. The flexibility of this job is it's greatest benefit ... If I had something I wanted to do, I didn't schedule a herd... but then had to fit them in to make sure they got done... now farmers are even more flexible since many test less frequently.
The thing is, with all the electronics in the farms now, the bigger dairies install all that, so they have all that info at their fingertips daily, getting a monthly report is not as beneficial. The only ones that this really benefits is the small dairy that does not see the feasibility of putting in thousands of dollars of electronics into small operations... so rely on the labs for the "monthly" info... and many small ones are selling out or the owners retiring out... my job is slowly becoming "extinct"...

 

[greybeard]

Thank you! A fascinating journey, re-inventing your self workwise partly due to necessity as life chunked curveballs and fast balls at ya, which I think is pretty common in agriculture, especially if farms are a part time/partial financial thing.