Small Farm in NE Texas

[Warren Allison]

@amschind I find your posts about your ideas, and what you are wanting to do, interesting. This is just my opinion, ok? But, I think you are on the right track considering a Jersey x Gyr cross for your herd. The cross will look look very similar to the cows that @Caustic Burno posted of his two. Those cows look as beefy as most other Br x beef cows look. This cross will give you the A2/A2 and 4.5% milk fat you seek. These will be some calf-raising machines. @Caustic Burno has posted other pics of those cows, with their Angus calves. Dunno if he has any pics of the calves when they are older, weaned, etc. , But I would sure like to see them. I think he has hit on the right combination for where he lives. I think if I were you, I would take my Cyr-Jersey crosses and breed them to a homo for black and polled Angus bull. You would get calves with maximum hybrid vigor that will grow like the devil, and will yield tender, well -marbles carcasses...ideal for your personal use or as a farm-raised, farm-to market product. But, if you did chose to sell them at the sale, or whatever, you'd have black calves, probably qualified for getting the CA premiums. A best of both worlds type scenario.

I have 5 nurse cows: 1 Jersey, 1 jesrey x Guernsey and 1 jersey x Brown Swiss, a Milking shorthorn, and 1 Hereford x Guernsey . Last year the Jersey had a calf by a red Brama bull that we pasture bred her to, and the two half-Jerseys were AI'ed to sexed grey Brahma semen from a polled bull. ( the milking shorthorn was bred to an Ayeshire when we got her, but we did AI' her to the grey polled Brahma bull for this year's calf). I took the three Br x Jersey calves back up here and put them on my friend's conditioning operation when I weaned them. I was going to raise them up and sell them as replacement heifers, open or bred, depending on what the client wanted when they were about 18 mos old. However,. someone saw them at his place when they were about 9 mos old, and just had a fit to buy them. I gave him a price I figured he would think was too high, and he pulled out cash and paid me on the spot. When we got the Herf x Guern nurse cow, we had put her in the pasture with the red Brahma bull. However, when her calf came about 2-3 months early, we got back a hold of the person we bought her from. He said she had been in the pasture with a yearling Gyr bull, who apparently was able to breed. It was a heifer calf as well, kinda a dark red brindle ( The gyr bull was black) . She was built like, and as beefy, as the 3 half Brahma heifers, and when I weaned her and took her to my friend's place, the same man called and wanted to buy her too, for the same price as the others. All 5 will be calving to the polled grey Brahma, with heifer calves, , starting December til about March.

Ad I am not trying to discourage you from the Piedmontese bull at all. Just throwing out the idea that you might breed a few of them to an Angus and just see what you think about the results. After their first calf, I might would try a homo for black Simm bull on a couple , as well. Simms marble well, too.

 

[Travlr]

It really is fun to learn new things and figure things out. Please use an actual milking pump. They generally cost over $1000. They need to also have a balance tank to make the pressure variation gentle and keep milk from being sucked into the pump engine. Other cheap or homemade pumps have been used and have ruined many cows and made kickers out of others. If you hand milk, or machine milk, please always wear nitrile gloves when handling the teats. The Staph aureus that is normal flora found on human skin gets into the open teat ends and infects udders with a chronic and recurrent mastitis almost impossible to cure. Clean the teats with sanitizing wipes, not water. Use a before and after teat dip containing 1/2% to 1% iodine and glycerin for an emolliant. I use this one https://www.farmandfleet.com/produc...nd-1-gallon-pre-post-1-2-iodine-teat-dip.html
Let the cows out to eat hay after milking so they remain standing for at least half an hour. This so the teat ends close and they don't lie in dirt. Let them bed down at night in clean fields not muddy corrals.

Learn something new every day...

I never knew that bare hands were a problem in milking a cow, and it makes me wonder how cows survived back in the days before all the sterile products and procedures.

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

Lots of one quarter and two quarter cows. People also died from drinking infected raw milk. The list of mastitis causing pathogens is quite impressive. Some are infectious and transmited by contact, some are environmental and found where cows live. Commercial dairys have very strict hygiene because of loss of income from mastitis. In the family cow dairy world, lots of people ruin their first milkcow from lack of knowledge, such as milking bare handed, letting them lie in filth or washing teats with water. My heifers will go to experienced homes only.

 

[amschind]

It really is fun to learn new things and figure things out. Please use an actual milking pump. They generally cost over $1000. They need to also have a balance tank to make the pressure variation gentle and keep milk from being sucked into the pump engine. Other cheap or homemade pumps have been used and have ruined many cows and made kickers out of others. If you hand milk, or machine milk, please always wear nitrile gloves when handling the teats. The Staph aureus that is normal flora found on human skin gets into the open teat ends and infects udders with a chronic and recurrent mastitis almost impossible to cure. Clean the teats with sanitizing wipes, not water. Use a before and after teat dip containing 1/2% to 1% iodine and glycerin for an emolliant. I use this one https://www.farmandfleet.com/produc...nd-1-gallon-pre-post-1-2-iodine-teat-dip.html
Let the cows out to eat hay after milking so they remain standing for at least half an hour. This so the teat ends close and they don't lie in dirt. Let them bed down at night in clean fields not muddy corrals.

I do really appreciate the advice on the pump; I have plenty of other uses for the vacuum pump that I have, so it's not a loss. With regard to cleanliness, that's one of my biggest questions with regard to the cow's health as well as keeping the milk clean. There are a few points that I want to break down here to better understand.

First off, I have a lot of knowledge about keeping germs segregated, which goes from every level from washing your hands between patients to wound care to bedside procedures to general surgery to surgery with implants (e.g. Orthopedics or vascular or heart surgery with implants). It isn't one size fits all, and the goals vary; with wound care you wear gloves not to keep the wound clean, but to keep it off of your hands. On the other end, surgeons all "scrub in" before surgery, but wear sterile gloves over their hands. Studies from way back show that even after that diligent, almost ritualistic hand washing, staph species (usually Coagulase negative, or non-pathogenic skin flora staphylococci) will emerge from the pores in our hands in about 10-15 minutes. Surgical gloves are sterilized and packaged such that nothing touches the exterior save for other sterile surfaces; if the glove touches any non-sterile surface, it is thenceforth no different than a rag on the floor and there is a set of steps to recitify that non-sterile condition (typically using a new, sterile glove).

All of that is to get to the point that gloves are sometimes treated as a magical talisman, when in fact they have the same strengths and limits as any other tool. My question is: what's the value of non-sterile nitrile gloves out of a box vs my freshly washed hands? If you culture the glove surface, it certainly has fewer bacteria than unwashed hands, but almost certainly higher than freshly washed hands. After the skin staphylococci start to re-emerge from pores, that trend will reverse and hands will again have a higher colony count than the gloves. More important is the fact that all bets are off as soon as you touch anything with the glove, which for the purposes of microbiology now has exactly the same flora as whatever it touched; this is because bacteria grow so quickly, that a small number of bacteria wiped off on a surface by accident will exponentially grow into a massive population in very small amounts of time. One of the places where gloves are absolutely vital is in microbiology, where the DNAse enzymes which our bodies secrete cannot be adequately reduced by hand washing. RNAse enzymes are even tougher to deal with, as are prions, and you basically have to burn everything that you touch to keep them under control (which is why RNA research is so costly and why prion diseases are such a huge issue).

So all of that to get to my question which is: how to keep staph out of the teats in a working milk stall? I'm happy to diligently use iodine or chlorhexidine on the teats and my hands, but I fear that like many things the devil is in the details. Specifically, my big fear is I'm not sure that the cows will understand that cleanliness will help to avoid mastitis, and will attempt to thwart my efforts to help them. I am thinking here about simple stuff like making sure that the cows poop and pee before coming into the stall and ideally designing the stalls to make my life as easy as possible. I think that getting my hands and the teat clean will be the easy part, but KEEPING them clean will be the tough one.

Going into more detail on that, once your hands and the teat are washed, anything that you touch has now contaminated your hands again. Again, we are talking about a milking parlor rather than a hip replacement, but I believe what you're saying about aggressive cleanliness preventing mastitis. To that end, I would love your thoughts on the relatively minute detail of keeping your hands and the cow's teats clean while milking without adding too much time, hassle or expense. That issue may actually fall into two distinct categories: keeping the milk clean and keeping the teat clean. To try to sort that out before delving too much into details, let me start with this question:

Does mastitis prevention hinge mostly upon how you clean the teat AFTER YOU HAVE FINISHED milking?

 

[amschind]

@amschind I find your posts about your ideas, and what you are wanting to do, interesting. This is just my opinion, ok? But, I think you are on the right track considering a Jersey x Gyr cross for your herd. The cross will look look very similar to the cows that @Caustic Burno posted of his two. Those cows look as beefy as most other Br x beef cows look. This cross will give you the A2/A2 and 4.5% milk fat you seek. These will be some calf-raising machines. @Caustic Burno has posted other pics of those cows, with their Angus calves. Dunno if he has any pics of the calves when they are older, weaned, etc. , But I would sure like to see them. I think he has hit on the right combination for where he lives. I think if I were you, I would take my Cyr-Jersey crosses and breed them to a homo for black and polled Angus bull. You would get calves with maximum hybrid vigor that will grow like the devil, and will yield tender, well -marbles carcasses...ideal for your personal use or as a farm-raised, farm-to market product. But, if you did chose to sell them at the sale, or whatever, you'd have black calves, probably qualified for getting the CA premiums. A best of both worlds type scenario.

I have 5 nurse cows: 1 Jersey, 1 jesrey x Guernsey and 1 jersey x Brown Swiss, a Milking shorthorn, and 1 Hereford x Guernsey . Last year the Jersey had a calf by a red Brama bull that we pasture bred her to, and the two half-Jerseys were AI'ed to sexed grey Brahma semen from a polled bull. ( the milking shorthorn was bred to an Ayeshire when we got her, but we did AI' her to the grey polled Brahma bull for this year's calf). I took the three Br x Jersey calves back up here and put them on my friend's conditioning operation when I weaned them. I was going to raise them up and sell them as replacement heifers, open or bred, depending on what the client wanted when they were about 18 mos old. However,. someone saw them at his place when they were about 9 mos old, and just had a fit to buy them. I gave him a price I figured he would think was too high, and he pulled out cash and paid me on the spot. When we got the Herf x Guern nurse cow, we had put her in the pasture with the red Brahma bull. However, when her calf came about 2-3 months early, we got back a hold of the person we bought her from. He said she had been in the pasture with a yearling Gyr bull, who apparently was able to breed. It was a heifer calf as well, kinda a dark red brindle ( The gyr bull was black) . She was built like, and as beefy, as the 3 half Brahma heifers, and when I weaned her and took her to my friend's place, the same man called and wanted to buy her too, for the same price as the others. All 5 will be calving to the polled grey Brahma, with heifer calves, , starting December til about March.

Ad I am not trying to discourage you from the Piedmontese bull at all. Just throwing out the idea that you might breed a few of them to an Angus and just see what you think about the results. After their first calf, I might would try a homo for black Simm bull on a couple , as well. Simms marble well, too.

I think that YOU may be the biggest argument against me trying what you suggest. What I mean by that is that you and folks like you who know just about infinitely more than I do are doing a lot of good work in that vein and having a lot of success. If I were trying to build a commercial operation, that is EXACTLY what I would do. As my brother, who is a consultant, says: "The pioneers take the arrows". I am starting from scratch in terms of knowledge, experience, facilities, genetics and machinery. Having one cow-calf pair at a time keeps my costs down to a reasonable level while I hopefully gain some knowledge. After a few years of learning the ropes and building up some facilities to deal with livestock, I'll be at a decision point where must I decide to build out a herd from my frankenstein monsters or declare it a failure and go do what everyone else is doing. I hope that makes some sense.

As for the actual series of crosses, I have a year to ponder so there's no rush. My current thought, based upon what folks have said and availability is a Piedmontese heifer (which are cheaper than I thought they would be) x Gyr sexed female semen. If I cross that F1 with a Guernsey (again, sexed female semen), 50% of those calves will be heterozygous for a non-functional myostatin mutant. We are already at 3 years absolute minimum, possibly 4 or even 6 depending on the myostatin coin flip. At that point I might cross the resulting heifer with unsexed Jersey semen to potentially produce a bull calf. It's still 50% to get a myostatin mutant in a male or female calf, so half of them will be veal and a waste of a year. That's the point when I really need to take a hard look at where I am at in terms of knowledge, hay production, facilities and how the animals are actually performing. If I have gained the skills and tools that I need, as well as making enough hay to feed more than 1-2 animals even through a dry year, then I might keep a bull to propagate genetics via putting him in with purchased Jersey heifers. Flip side, if I'm not where I need to be or in the likely even that things aren't working out with the crosses as I had hoped, I can send my frankenstein monster to the butcher and buy some real cows.

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

I am a retired ICU nurse from a Level 1 Regional Trauma center, so I know about gloves both sterile and non sterile. It IS fun to be the germ police

The cow comes into the milking parlor (sound like some kind of spa doesn't it?) She has dirt on her teats, or may have clean looking teats that have bacteria on them you don't want in the milk.

Of course you don't want to run a commercial dairy but there are reasons to use proper milking hygiene. Commercial dairys are already working on razor thin profit margins and don't want to lose milk production or have to cull good cows. Standard practice on dairys is to don gloves, clean and sanitize the teats before milking with disposable teat wipes, then dipping, waiting the amount of time for the bactiocide to work, then stripping 5 or 6 squirts out of each teat because bacteria are in the streak canal that is in the long part of the teat. Also this milk is squirted onto a special strainer to check for clumps or other funkiness. Personally I always ttrip the teats with a new glove while the iodine pre dip still on there, then I wipe it off with a towel that has been washed with bleach.

Handling the teats causes their brain to release oxitocin which circulates in the blood to the udder, which causes her to let down her milk 60 to 90 seconds later. You don't want to put the machine on before she has a chance to let down because milking a teat that is milkless can damage them. This is called overmilking. Pump pressure set higher than 12Hg will also cause overmilking.

Water is not used for cleaning because it runs down the teat and gathers on the test end, bringing live bacteria. Gloves are always used when handling teats and changed between cows.bAfter milking the teats are dipped again because the teat ends openings are dialtated, takes about a half hour to for them to close. Even so, you don't want them going out and lying down in dirt. You want them to stand up and eat. Also, they look forward to eating and happy cows make more milk..

There are two types of mastitis pathogens, environmental and contagious. You will probably enjoy reading this. https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1125&context=extension_extra

 

[amschind]

I am a retired ICU nurse from a Level 1 Regional Trauma center, so I know about gloves both sterile and non sterile. It IS fun to be the germ police

The cow comes into the milking parlor (sound like some kind of spa doesn't it?) She has dirt on her teats, or may have clean looking teats that have bacteria on them you don't want in the milk.

Of course you don't want to run a commercial dairy but there are reasons to use proper milking hygiene. Commercial dairys are already working on razor thin profit margins and don't want to lose milk production or have to cull good cows. Standard practice on dairys is to don gloves, clean and sanitize the teats before milking with disposable teat wipes, then dipping, waiting the amount of time for the bactiocide to work, then stripping 5 or 6 squirts out of each teat because bacteria are in the streak canal that is in the long part of the teat. Also this milk is squirted onto a special strainer to check for clumps or other funkiness. Personally I always ttrip the teats with a new glove while the iodine pre dip still on there, then I wipe it off with a towel that has been washed with bleach.

Handling the teats causes their brain to release oxitocin which circulates in the blood to the udder, which causes her to let down her milk 60 to 90 seconds later. You don't want to put the machine on before she has a chance to let down because milking a teat that is milkless can damage them. This is called overmilking. Pump pressure set higher than 12Hg will also cause overmilking.

Water is not used for cleaning because it runs down the teat and gathers on the test end, bringing live bacteria. Gloves are always used when handling teats and changed between cows.bAfter milking the teats are dipped again because the teat ends openings are dialtated, takes about a half hour to for them to close. Even so, you don't want them going out and lying down in dirt. You want them to stand up and eat. Also, they look forward to eating and happy cows make more milk..

There are two types of mastitis pathogens, environmental and contagious. You will probably enjoy reading this. https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1125&context=extension_extra

That's exactly what I was after. Big picture, it seems like cleaning before milking is for the milk and cleaning after milking is for the health of the cow/teat. Operating on that assumption, I have a few more questions that I'll divide along those two goals.

1) It seems like there might be merit to prewashing with soapy water first to get the big clumps of dirt off and then going to a separate chlorhexidine/iodine solution once you have clean skin to work on. One seemingly minor point that actually might be important is sterilizing the tips of the teats after stripping out the milk from the milk canal, with the idea that the entrained bacteria in the milk canal can contaminate the skin that you just sterilized. I need to ponder this more, but conceivably you could knock the rough dirt off with soapy water and promote letdown, strip the contaminated milk out of the teats, and then actually sterilize the teat with chlorhexidine/iodine. You would have to waste a bit more milk to ensure that you didn't get iodine flavored milk, but not enough to matter? That's actually testable with just an autoclave, liquid media, autopipettes and some petri dishes/nutrient agar, so I could actually put numbers to this instead of simply speculating. I need to go read more before, but I really appreciate you giving me such a great summary.

2) With regard to keeping the teats/cow healthy, it seems like keeping her udder out of the dirt while the teats are open is massive determinant of mastitis/udder health. I guess one proxy that we should already have good data on is: do cows which are ONLY milked by humans have a lower incidence of mastitis vs cows that nurse calves? I can look that up and need to, but I'm mostly posting to spur discussion.

Thanks again!

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

NONO NO do not wash clumps of mud and manure off with water, EVER! Generally people remove dried debris with a brush. But actually, the hairy furry parts of the udder are not much cared about. It is the teats area that attention is paid to. When a cow sleeps in a clean field or clean bedding there are no clumps of manure and mud. If she does not have to walk through mud and mire to get to the barn this is the way to go and not catch an environmental mastitis. Dairies and family cow folks clip the fur short by shaving or by using the quick pass of a flame. I shave the udder floor area with a dog clipper in the winter. I use a metal horse curry comb, dry, to remove any clumps of debris near the teats.

Cleaning the teat before milking, it is not just about the milk. Sometimes inflations that are milking each quarter are old or because the pump is bad or not set right, milk can resurge and backflush into the teat canal and infuse mastitis causing germs.

" One seemingly minor point that actually might be important is sterilizing the tips of the teats after stripping out the milk from the milk canal, with the idea that the entrained bacteria in the milk canal can contaminate the skin that you just sterilized. I need to ponder this more, " This is why I strip the teats while the iodine teat dip is still wet, then wipe it off with a clean towel, a clean spot on it on the towel for each teat. You wipe the two farthest away first, then the 2 nearest ones. That way the teats that were sanitized are not touched and recontaminated. This is just standard dairy hygiene.

Nothing is 'sterilized', it is sanitized. Sterilization would require a long period of scubbing, as you know, with alcohol or some other germicide. If a person is collecting samples from masitic quarter to send to the lab for culture and sensitivity, or prepping a teat for intramammary infusion of mastitis mdicine, this requires, as it does in people, to scub with alcohol pads from an in an inner to outer wipping motion. Otherwise we would have positive Staph aurious spread by a person and other contaimiannts.

Best to avoid this whole 9 yards by using strict milking hygiene and keeping your cows clean. I was at the dairy where I bought my 2 Jersey bottle heifers and the cows were kept in free stall barns. They do not go outside to graze in the winter, green chop is brought to them. You know that brillaint cleaness of newborn calves? Thats what the whole milking herd looked like. This was a organic dairy. If a cow gets mastitis from environmental or infectious she is not treated she is culled, ie, sent for slaughter.

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

People 'calf share' so they can milk only once a day, or have weekends off to go someplace, or don't want to deal with that much milk. But the fact is, cows and calves don't want so share. Cows hold up their hind milk and most of the cream for the calf. New calves get diarhea they can die from by drinking to much milk from a dairy bred fresh cow. They can't handle that much milk until they are older. Large amounts of milk left in the udder can lead to mastitis because she's not milked out. Staph a, the most and almost impossible mastitis to cure, is spread by calves cross sucking other cows in the pasture. Calves also spread staph a from teat to unifected quarters of their dam because it surives and thrives on mucus membranes. In addition, the sharp milk teeth of calves, especially strong greedy bull calves, cut up the cow's teats then you have to milk dealing with these cuts. Go onto a family cow board and you can read about these common troubles. You can look up the statistics, but almost all cows in the US are milked on commercial dairys. The calves are taken away after birth and given colostrum, raised on a bottle. I am raising three heifers that way.

 

[farmerjan]

I can tell you that most dairies go through and pre dip... There is NO WIPING of teats... they are predipped with one of several types of dips.....chlorhex or iodine or other.... 30-60 seconds they are prestripped of about 2-5 squirts from each teat... checking for mastitis and to help to stimulate the letdown... most let down takes 3-90 seconds.... There are a few that will predip a 2nd time... them wipe off... and put the machine on.
If a cow has filthy teats because she wants to lay in the manure in an alley way on a farm... most will wash. Most water that is available in dairies near the milking parlor has a sanitizer/antibacterial in it. So washing is not the end of the world... but most try to not wash if possible.
One of my dairies used Hydrogen Peroxide... Cheap and very effective in destroying infective agents.... Another uses a diluted bleach solution, but it can be hard on their teats.
Once the milking machine comes off... they are post dipped and usually it will dry within 1-3 minutes. That will normally seal the teat from allowing bacteria to enter the teat.
Since you seem to be well aware of bacteria and other infectious agents... you also know that there are a certain amount of naturally occurring contaminents and you cannot get rid of all of them... NOR do you want to... a "sterile" environment is not healthy either.
The best 3 dairies for somatic cell count (scc) I have tested over the years have TOTALLY different procedures... #1 does not touch the udder with any water... NONE.....iodine pre and post... with a spray wand... no dipping at all. Spray, strip and then wipe, put machine on cows... they will check the udder/individual teats when it comes off to make sure they are fully milked out... then again sprayed with iodine.
#2 washes the cows with an udder wash... then strips, then "predips, wipes off and puts machine inflations on... check the teats after and then post dip .
The 3rd does a predip, wipes with a cloth, then strips, redips, then wipes off and attaches machine inflations. When the machine comes off, they seldom will touch the teat unless it looks like they didn't milk out, and post dips.

All 3 regularly had very low scc.... below 125,000.... Allowable is 400,000..... milk companies pay on "quality of the milk"... 250,000 is the limit for full pay.... Below 150,000 they are paid a premium and below 125,000 an even greater premium.

Farm #2 and farm #3 had the best scc averages year after year.... they regularly won awards at the yearly meeting we had.... Averaging in the 75,000to 125,000 all the time.
Farm #1 was not far behind in #'s.....
The farm that used the hydrogen peroxide would be right up close to these farms... and he had his kids do some milking and they were not as religious at "cleanliness" so not surprising they were a little behind, in the counts. Yet he received quite a bit of premium payments also.

I have had milk samples run through over the years from my nurse cows... no antibacterial dips of any kind... and the milk was as clean or cleaner for SCC as any I milked by hand; equivalent to most scc results of farms with fastidious practices. It could be that the calves were regularly keeping the bacterias "out" of the udder through frequent nursing.

The old way of dealing with cows with mastitis problems was to put them in a pen with a couple of aggressive calves... that would keep them milked out and regularly butting the udder to keep the edema and swelling from mastitis infections "broken up"....

One of the worst types of mastitis is Klebsiella... which comes mostly from oak sawdust/shavings... found in the dirt that the trees are dragged through and the dirt is in the sawdust from sawing logs... So anyone that gets green sawdust will cover it with a tarp and "cook" it... let it go through the heating process to kill the klebsiella bacteria.. This type of mastitis will cause the cow to go from milking say a 5 gallon pail to 1 qt of watery stuff from one milking to another... Often the cow will be dead in 24 hours... if you save the cow, she will often go dry.
Coliform mastitis is another that hits fast... but it can be treated if caught early... Oxytet works very good on it IV... and the cow will often come back to normal production inside of a week. It can kill them if not caught early also...

Staph and strep are something that is seen alot, and some cows naturally have high levels... they will become chronic mastitis cows... many show little obvious signs... clumps of stringy or thick milk... or will have some in the first few squirts then "clear up"... These cows are considered to be chronic and will milk as good as any other cow on the dairy. A new case can get treated and they can get over it... some will clear up for awhile and then show signs again.

I am well aware of what an infection that gets into the body can do. I have had 3 joint replacements so am careful... But I am not so fanatical since there is no way to totally stop all infectious organisms.

I am all for NOT using anymore "drugs" than absolutely necessary... Antibiotics have been way OVERUSED.... I grow an organic garden... BUT.... I do not agree with the whole thing of not treating a cow that gets a case of mastitis or gets sick otherwise... just ship her... If that is the case.... then people should not take antibiotics... if they get sick, they either get over it or they die...that does not mean the cow is no longer a good cow or producer.... I mean if your kid gets sick and an antibiotic is what is needed to stop a massive infection that could kill them... and you give them the antibiotic... are they are "less" than a kid that never gets an antibiotic???? A cow that is treated and recovers, can never be put back in an organic dairy.... in fact, they are not supposed to be kept on the same farm...

Yet most people seem to think that once a cow gets an antibiotic, she is "contaminated"... and the milk supply has antibiotics in it. That is soooo ERRONEOUS.... milk is kept out of the tank for the reccommended withdrawla time... most farms will have a cow's milk tested for the antibiotic before they will put her back in the tank to be sure... EVERY SINGLE time milk is picked up off a farm, a sample is taken and it is run at the milk plant for antibiotics..... so if 2 or 3 farms are put together on the tanker... and one comes back with a level of something unacceptable... the whole tanker is NOT unloaded... and the farm with the problem is RESPONSIBLE for the whole tanker of milk.,... That's alot of milk to have to pay for.... they all have insurance to cover something like that.... BUT.... it will only cover one bad tank in 2 years.... SO...... Dairy farmers are very fastidious about the quality of their milk....
Cows that have chronic conditions should be sold.... but every animal, every person, can get sick at sometime in their life...to "throw away" an otherwise good cow, because she needed some help to get over whatever she was infected with, is just way beyond sensible in my book.

 

[farmerjan]

I have "milk shared" with calves many times over the years. Many of my cows have little problem with sharing milk... I completely milk out one or 2 quarters so that I get the butterfat and they will let it down. It is all according to how you train the cow to milk. Some will hold their milk, for the calves, some are perfectly happy to stand there while being milked and let it down... and I have gotten some very impressive production by penning the calves and then milking 12 hrs later, and then letting the calves back with the cow after that. Sometimes I would milk one side and let the calf on the other side.... So there is not the most "sanitary" conditions...
One good sign of milk with a low SCC...... the "keeping quality" of the milk in the tank... I can keep my milk for 2-3 weeks in the fridge , in GLASS jars... that are simple washed and dried... not even run through a dishwasher.....and it still taste perfectly fine...Have done some "unofficial" comparisons over the many years I have had cows and gotten milk off some of the dairies I have tested.
The lower the SCC the better keeping quality. Since most of the milk in this area is for Fluid Milk sales... the lower the scc, the longer the shelf life of the milk... so one additional reason the milk companies pay incentives and bonuses for low SCC milk produced.

 

[farmerjan]

Most dairies will "burn the long hair" on the udders with a flame... quick pass and it does not hurt them... Some used to clip... If you keep the hair short, there is little there to get too dirty/contaminated. It also enables the dips to actually get on the teat and not on the hair. Cows have hair, not fur... but it will get thick in the colder weather...

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

Its those organic dairys that don't use antibiotics. They get a higher price for the milk because everything is organic, including the feed. According to my Progressive Dairy magazine a lot of cows are milked by robots these days which to me is kind of creepy. Whenever the cows feel their udder full they go get on a giant revolving carosel all facing inward and their udder is spray prepped and milked by machine then post sprayed. Some times cows get on when they don't need to be milked, just for the ride, apparently.

 

[farmerjan]

Robots are individualized stalls here, the carousel milking parlors are strictly for manned operations in this area. The cows do like to ride the carousels. There is a 72 cow carousel that I helped to test... milking 2900 cows at the time.... there is someone pushing the cows up to it and making sure they get off as their rotation is complete. There is a heavy "rubber sheet" type thing. that hangs down where they are supposed to back off it.... that helps to convince them to get off as they come around... but I watched several that dropped their heads and let it slide over their back so they could go around again.
As for the robot milking, the cows will enter an individual stall... they have an ID tag or neck collar... it tells when she was last milked, allows her to get feed if she has not had her daily ration amount. They can go in to be milked, up to 6 times in a 24 hour period. There is a laser that guides the inflation to the teat after they are "brushed off" and some use water to clean the teats.

Yes, organic milk pays more to the farmer... his costs are 30-50% higher than conventional farms too, depending on what they can grow and what has to be trucked in. Several organic dairies here have actually gone back to conventional type due to the prices of the feed and all they have to pay trucking for. If you feed a little less of the organically grown feed, the production suffers, so even if you get more for the milk, if you ship less milk, you are not making a whole lot more in the end.

One dairy that went organic here, was kin to another farmer. When they got a cow that got sick for whatever reason and had to be treated, it was shipped to the other cousin, the withdrawal time and all was followed, and then when cleared to go in the tank, he kept her because she could not go back to the organic farm. He wound up with some very good cows because they had gotten sick, whatever the reason, and had to get treated with antibiotics. A loss to the organic farmer because they would have had to ship them untreated and taken what they brought... or if they treated them... they had to be housed and milked away from the organic herd... and with holding for slaughter is often 30-60 days after treatment...much longer than withholding for milk use.... so a long time to not get anything back. That is why many just ship and take what they can rather than treat... and a sick cow will be discounted when she is sold... the buyers can tell at a glance 80% of the ones that don't feel good...

 

[farmerjan]

@amschind ... there is NO WAY you are ever going to be sure that a cow will pee or poop before she comes in to be milked... that is an impossibility... I have been on farms where a cow will stand outside the door and not come in for milking for an hour or 2... but when she comes through the door it is like a switch and she will do a pile when she is walking in or after she gets in the milking stall, or on her way out. They could walk her around the holding pen for a half an hour and she will do it when she comes through the door...

If germs are such a big concern, then you ought to rethink milking cows at all. There is not a perfect way to make sure there is no contamination of the udder.. and no way you are going to keep it "sterile"...
I am not trying to put you down, and with things like replacement joints and such, yes, being as sterile as possible is important. But to try to compare it to "sterile gloves" as opposed to non-sterile nitrile gloves that most use for milking, and worrying about the possible contamination of the gloves in the box as opposed to your hands is going to drive you nuts.

These are animals, without any possibility of making them think about sterile procedures... like a person can be reasoned with. They will not always do what you want and have no thought processes to not "contaminate" their environment or anything like that.

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

I always thank my cow when she drops a load outside. They also poop or pee while in the stancion when they are stressed, such as new to milking, a different parlor or or a different person milking. You can count on it. Best to keep some straw nearby to throw down back there to keep stuff from splashing.

 

[Warren Allison]

@amschind ... there is NO WAY you are ever going to be sure that a cow will pee or poop before she comes in to be milked... that is an impossibility... I have been on farms where a cow will stand outside the door and not come in for milking for an hour or 2... but when she comes through the door it is like a switch and she will do a pile when she is walking in or after she gets in the milking stall, or on her way out. They could walk her around the holding pen for a half an hour and she will do it when she comes through the door...

If germs are such a big concern, then you ought to rethink milking cows at all. There is not a perfect way to make sure there is no contamination of the udder.. and no way you are going to keep it "sterile"...
I am not trying to put you down, and with things like replacement joints and such, yes, being as sterile as possible is important. But to try to compare it to "sterile gloves" as opposed to non-sterile nitrile gloves that most use for milking, and worrying about the possible contamination of the gloves in the box as opposed to your hands is going to drive you nuts.

These are animals, without any possibility of making them think about sterile procedures... like a person can be reasoned with. They will not always do what you want and have no thought processes to not "contaminate" their environment or anything like that.

ROFLMAO! You are correct! I see the same thing with horses. 1st thing they will do, when you load them on your freshy-washed trailer with new shavings on it, is poop! I have heard this equine vet friend of mine, when asked what to do when their horse colics, say: " Immediately hook to your trailer, and load the horse to bring it to me. 99% of the time, you can turn around an unload him, as he will poop soon as he gets on it!"