What are the most important aspects to consider and mistakes to avoid to optimize the hygiene of the milking system? Let’s shed light on the worst and best practices to safeguard the health of your herd and the quality of your components, which are the key to your farm’s profitability.
Firstly, are you aware of the potential risks related to poor parlour hygiene and the incorrect washing routine of the milking system? Throughout these blog episodes, we aim to demonstrate that proper cleaning should never be underestimated when wishing to improve milk quality and optimize milking performance.
The goal of proper system cleaning is to eliminate dirt and milk residues after each milking, to achieve the safest condition for the following session. However, when it is not carried out thoroughly and correctly, it might have negative consequences on the farm’s profitability. Therefore, let’s start by understanding the most common mistakes associated with system washing and the risks related to them!
- The first big mistake is?not considering cows’ needs, creating an uncomfortable, dirty milking environment. In this regard, the first factor is?poor hygiene, determined by incorrect cleaning of the parlour, its components, and the tools used by the farmer during the process. This condition facilitates the spread of bacteria, representing a major threat to animals’ health and milk quality. Consequently, working conditions will be affected by restless cows, which are more difficult to manage, further decreasing the efficiency of the process.
- Another key factor is using the?wrong washing parameters?for the milking system. In fact, incorrect flush, detergents, and water temperature will not properly sanitize tubes, causing milk residues to remain on the walls, affecting the milk that will flow through it during the following milking session.
- Like every component of the milking system, washing solutions need maintenance, too. Therefore,?not following periodical checks?of their functioning might decrease the cleaning performance, leaving room for bacteria.
- To achieve an efficient washing of the milking system, monitoring water and energy waste is crucial. How could this be done? By?connecting the milking system to a milk meter, that thoroughly shows the amount of water used.
As with every bad habit, the poor cleanliness of the milking system properly has negative consequences on the farm’s profitability. Let’s now browse through some possible red flags that might indicate an issue with parlour hygiene!
- Lower milk quality, high SCC & mastitis. Poor hygiene can be the worst enemy to your profitability, deeply affecting milk’s bacterial contamination. When in contact with a dirty environment, the pathogens which reside on the hoses where milk flows spread across the liquid, dramatically decreasing its quality while boosting the risk of infection. In fact, during milk extraction, the teat sphincter is open and extremely exposed to pathogens. At a later stage, these might increase the Somatic Cell Count and lead to mastitis.
- Cross-contamination. Since the same milking components are used for multiple cows, if the formers are contaminated, the bacteria may spread more easily from one cow to another, resulting in a substantial increase in infections.
- Uncomfortable, incomplete, and long milking. If you are experiencing this problem during your milking session, bad parlour hygiene might be a cause. In fact, when milking conditions are not optimal, cows get easily stressed and uncomfortable. The downturns of this are several: on the one hand, when prolonging their exposure to vacuum, teat-end conditions are threatened, and hyperkeratosis might arise; on the other hand, the longer the time cows spend standing, the higher the probability of issues related to feet and lameness.
- Your milking components at stake. By underestimating the hygiene and maintenance of the milking system, you expose the different parts to excessive usage, dirt, and potentially incorrect habits. This will facilitate their breaking or malfunctioning, causing unexpected additional costs, that undermine the efficiency and the profitability of the farm.
Now that we have highlighted how critical the consequences of underestimating parlour hygiene and proper system cleaning could be, what are the benefits of choosing the right cleaning solution, setting the best washing parameters, and having regular system maintenance? Make sure not to miss our next Blog episode!
milkrite | InterPuls thank Simone Pezzi for his contribution.
