MILKING PARLOUR PRACTICES
Efficient
milking requires that Cows should be brought to the milking parlour as clean
and as calm as possible, with a good milking routine and well-maintained milking
system.
The Environment for the Animal
Farm hygiene reduces the risk of mastitis. If the animals also arrive calm, this favors correct milk letdown, stimulation is improved and animals are milked better and faster. Cows are creatures of habit and therefore like to be treated in the same way every day.
1. Introduction
Animal pushers should do their job quietly and calmly with no harsh behavior. Oxytocin induces milk letdown. However, when animals are nervous, this stimulates another hormone, adrenaline, which has the opposite effect and interrupts milk let-down. Stress means 20% less milk.
2. The Waiting Area
If there are waiting areas, they should be large enough for the number of animals to be milked (1.3 m2/cow), there should be an upward slope towards the milking parlour (2– 3%), and ideally, cows should not have to spend more than 1 h per batch there. The area should have automatic ventilation, with one 1-m diameter fan for every 10 cows.
3. The Milking routine
The aim of any milking routine should be to Milk clean, dry, well-stimulated cows. There is no one single milking routine for all farms but there are operations that should always be carried out.
Removing
the first squirts or “foremilk stripping”.
This
allows us to:
1.
Detect clinical mastitis
2. Promote milk let-down
Washing
of teats prior to milking or predipping. This allows us to:
1.
Promote milk let-down
2. Hygenic teats
Drying the teats with a paper towel so that they are dry when attaching the milking units. This avoids problems such as teat cup slipping. The cow’s teats should be full of milk before the milking units are attached and so we need to synchronize cisternal with alveolar milk. This can be achieved with the operations described above. Cluster attachment to udder should be 60 – 90 s.
Correct milking unit attachment is very important:
Prevents
or minimizes entry of air, and so avoids vacuum fluctuations and reverse impacts.
Align
the milking units, always towards the cow’s head.
This achieves more efficient milking and avoids such problems as one teat being poorly milked because the milking unit is twisted around.
4. Gentle removal of the milking units:
Switch off the vacuum pump, gently remove the cluster and disinfect the teat. There are also teat dips on the market called sealers that protect the teats between milking processes. Always cover 2/3rds of the teat. Prevent the cows from lying down after milking, for at least 30 minutes.
5. The Milking Machine:
The objective of milking is to milk maximum in the shortest period of time with no damage to animals.
How
do we achieve this?
Milking with a high flow rate after applying cluster. We must adapt the milking machine to the farm and not the other way round.
Before
starting milking, the producer or the operators who are going to be in the
milking parlour have to be trained to carry out a visual inspection of:
1.
Teat cups should not be twisted
2.
External cleanliness of the milking units, regulators, etc.
3.
Air injectors should be clean.
4.
There should be no breaks in all milk tubes. All these matters can be easily
corrected before milking starts. At the point of starting the milking, the operators
should observe the state of the cows, i.e. are they kicking, nervous, not tolerating
the milking unit, etc? Cows are animals that do speak to us in their own way
and one way of expressing themselves is through the behavior we have just described.
5.
Dynamic monitoring of the milking machine:
This
should be done by trained technical staff. This involves monitoring
parameters during milking, such as:
The nominal vacuum level (vacuum gauge) is that installed by the official dealer and can be seen with the machine at full capacity. Vacuum level in the final unit is measured with a pulse counter or a digital vacuum gauge with the machine at full capacity. Vacuum level in milk pipeline measured with a pulse counter or a digital vacuum gauge with the machine at full capacity.The difference in the vacuum between the final unit and the milk pipeline should be no more than 2kPa.
Regulation sensitivity:
to check this, open 1 or 2 milking units (depending on the number of units) to
allow air into the system and monitor the fall in vacuum, which should be no
more than 2 kPa.Vacuum level in collector at maximum flow rate measured with a
“T“ shaped piece placed between the collector and the long milk tube or by
inserting a needle into the short milk tube.
We take an average of 10 values which gives us the real value. Measure the force with which the teat cup collapses; this is the force (pressure), expressed in kPa, which has to be applied to make the walls of the teat cup liner meet and is measured using a manual vacuum pump and a pulse analyzer. All teat cup liners leave the factory with a predetermined collapse force (for example 10.5 kPa for rubber liners and 12.5 kPa for silicone) but this diminishes with age, at a much faster rate with rubber, increasing the risk to the tips of the teats (hyperkeratosis). Measuring the force with which the linercollapses tells us whether it is soft or hard. Teat cup liners have a limited life and so must be replaced at the appropriate time; studies have shown that after 2000-3000 milkings, up to 60% of teats can be poorly milked. Residual vacuum for massage, This value is obtained from the difference between the vacuum in the collector and the force with which the teat cup collapses. This determines the ideal value in order to improve the condition of the teats during milking. Pulse parameters: rate, irregular pulse, pulse ratio and phase duration. The pulsation is what keeps the blood circulating around the teat and is achieved by the opening (suction phase) and closing (massage phase) of the teat cups approximately 60 times per minute by alternating vacuum and atmospheric pressure in the pulsation chamber. Each pulsation cycle has 4 phases, A, B, C and D, the duration of which is very important in order to ensure good condition of both the tip and the body of the teats. The ideal duration of the phases for a 60/40 pulse ratio and pulse rate of 60 ppm are as follows:
A
150-200 ms
B
400-450 ms
C
100-200 ms
D
200-300 ms
A+B
milking phase
C+D
resting phase
Removal parameters:
Prior
stimulation, limit of low milk flow rate, final time post-milking.
Additionally,
if the milking software program allows us, we can also look at:
Bimodal
curves Percentage of cows that let down the milk in less than 2 minutes, etc.
Maximum
and minimum flows/cow, Average milking times/cow.
Among
other things, this data allows us to identify which operators milk better or
worse, whether animals are well stimulated or not, and whether or not we are
rushing the milking too much, etc. With these parameters, our objective is to
extract the maximum quantity of milk in as short a time as possible. Checking
for residual milk. This should be monitored in a set number of cows per
milking. It should be no more than 400 c/c among 4 teats if measured manually.
If measured when reattached, a milking point of 1-1.5 liters would be
normal.The objective is to find out whether or not the cows have been well milked
or still have milk left an important risk factor for mastitis.
Condition of the teats:
Changes
in skin color, changes in skin thickness, hyperkeratosis, etc. These are
changes that can occur short-term and longterm and they are very important for
the health of the udders.
At
least every 3 months, the tips of the teats should be assessed and checked for
hyperkeratosis. This should always be done immediately after the milking unit
has been removed.
Hyperkeratosis has a number of different
causes.
Some examples are:
1. Excessive vaccum
(46 kPa for example)
2. Residual vacuum for massage above or below
26 kPa – 27 kPa
3. Excessive over milking
4. Incorrect suction/massage phases
Once
the milking unit is removed, the opening in the teat takes about 30 minutes to
close, although this is not always the case as it also depends on how long the
milking unit has been attached to the animal’s udder.
If,
after removing the milking units, the teats are flaccid, soft, dry, and free of
pain, we know that the milking machine is working well and that the milking
parlour is being properly run.
6. Hyperkeratosis
A
small deposit of keratin should not be considered as a risk factor for mammary
gland infection but simply as a normal physiological response to the milking.
However, excess keratinization of the whole tip of the teat can impede proper
circulation of the milk. A large amount of excess keratin prevents the teat from
closing properly and can cause up to a third of the length of the channel to
remain open between milkings. There is a significant association between
callosity and mammary infections.
Bits
of the keratin sometimes come off, causing an open wound which can attract Staphylococcus and thus add to the
risk of infection. Sphincter eversion is often talked about, when the sphincter
muscle helps close the teat canal. However, it is unlikely to protrude to the
outside, even in the absence of massive destruction of the teat. What we refer
to as eversion, therefore, is actually the hyperkeratosis described above.
7. Conclusions
All
the operators should work in the same way and following the same guidelines
every day.
All
these parameters form part of what signifies good practice in the milking
parlour. Once established, follow-up visits should be carried out in order to
check that everything is operating correctly.
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