Maine Farmcast

On this episode of the Maine Farmcast, Drs. Glenda Pereira and Colt Knight sit down with Dr. Gary Anderson, Animal and BioSciences Specialist Emeritus, University of Maine. The conversation reviews milk quality guidelines and cleanliness after milking and to review in the milk room. Dr. Anderson was a professor at the University of Maine, and served in the role of dairy specialist working on programs such as milk quality and sanitation, estate planning, Green Pastures program and more. Dr. Anderson continues to be a resource for the dairy and livestock industries in Maine. In his free time, Anderson stays active with his grandkids. 

Important: Please work with your veterinarian to develop health management plans, and discuss protocols for maintaining milk quality. 
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Creators and Guests

Host
Colt Knight
Colt grew up in a coal mining family in West Virginia where they also operated a small family farm and show horse stable. During academic breaks and between schools, he worked in strip mines across the country. Colt earned his B.S. in Animal Science at the University of Kentucky, M.S. in Animal Science at Angelo State University, and his Ph.D. in Animal Science at the University of Arizona in 2006, 2012, and 2016, respectively. In the fall of 2016, he worked on a postdoc with Dr. Derek Bailey at New Mexico State University. Since 2017, Colt W. Knight works as an Assistant Professor of Extension for the University of Maine where he serves as the State Livestock Specialist. He teaches Introduction to Animal Science (AVS 145) and runs the Maine Grazing Behavior Lab. The core focus of the Grazing Behavior lab revolves around designing and manufacturing livestock tracking collars, engaging in applied grazing behavior research, and assisting other researchers with technology to interpret animal behavior. Dr. Knight’s research is broadly focused on selecting animals uniquely adapted to landscapes and promoting sustainable agriculture. Colt is the current chair for the Society of Range Management Livestock Foraging Behavior Committee, as well as, the North East Region Chair for the National Association of County Agricultural Agent’s Teaching and Educational Technology Committee. He also serves as an Associate Editor for the journal Ecological Processes. Colt is actively engaged in outreach and has delivered over 150 seminars on livestock production since starting his career at the University of Maine.
Host
Glenda Pereira
As the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Dairy Specialist, Dr. Pereira conducts applied research and develops educational programs for dairy and livestock producers across the state of Maine and New England. While the Holstein breed is near and dear to her heart, Dr. Pereira admires the Normande breed and her favorite dairy products are sour cream and ice cream.

What is Maine Farmcast?

The Maine Farmcast features weekly conversations with experts from across the country sharing insights and advice for both new and seasoned farmers running operations of any size. Hosted by three livestock specialists from the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, the show brings you world-class expertise paired with practical advice about how to apply cutting-edge research to improve the efficiency and sustainability of your farming operation.

Glenda Pereira:

Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. This is your co-host today, doctor Glenna Pereira. And I have Dr. Colt Knight, our other host here in the studio today, and he said, let's kick this pig. I like that saying, Colt. But why are where did it come from?

Colt Knight:

Well, I'm an Appalachian. So, you'll hear all kinds of, colloquialisms, so to speak, in my vernacular.

Glenda Pereira:

I like that.

Colt Knight:

I try to avoid them in my my formal speech. Yeah. But, you know

Glenda Pereira:

When you need to get me in line, you're like, hey, Glenda, you know, cut it off. Let's kick this pig. Let's go.

Colt Knight:

Yeah. So And then another one is if Glenda keeps eating in my podcast studio and getting crumbs all over the couch and we get ants, I am going to tan your hide.

Glenda Pereira:

I like that one. I promise that I will not get any crumbs in your podcast studio. But let's, introduce, our return guest today. So

Colt Knight:

do do

Glenda Pereira:

you wanna take it away?

Colt Knight:

We have one of my favorite people in extension, doctor Gary Anderson. When I got hired on in 2017, Gary served as my faculty mentor. He drove me all around Maine and showed me dairies and different things. And what always amazed me about Dr. Anderson is he had a mind like a steel trap. He remembered everything.

Colt Knight:

We'd give him a list of, like, 200 producers, and he could tell you all their kids' names and where they lived and who drove their FedEx truck and which sports they played. And it was always great to have Gary as a resource when we did extension work. And he was a fishing buddy of mine.

Glenda Pereira:

What kind of fish?

Colt Knight:

We mostly caught smallmouth.

Colt Knight:

I don't think we ever went trout fishing. Right. Yeah.

Glenda Pereira:

So for the folks tuning in, we already covered, sort of a milk quality guidelines and recommendations. So please reference that episode, and then tune into this one for more of on the farm, you know, management related things. So without further delay, Gary, do you want to kick us off or kick the pig here as Colt taught me today?

Gary Anderson:

Okay. Let's we're gonna start with reviewing some of the milk quality tests that a processor might have. But let's look and see what some of the other tests that are done once that milk gets to the dairy. And the big thing is every tanker load of milk is tested for antibiotics. So when they do an evaluation of how many tankers in the country are positive for antibiotics.

Gary Anderson:

It's a very, very, very low number. They also are going to do the series of bacteria counts, somatic cell count. They're going to do a cryoscope to see if there's any added water. They do that by freezing point to determine if that freezing point is off, whether somebody had added water to their milk. They're going to look at the aroma.

Gary Anderson:

They're going to look at the temperature that that milk was received in. The one thing to remember is once that milk goes to the dairy, you can't improve the quality. So poor quality milk is going to make poor quality product. And so I thought one of the things that we could talk about today was to look at the basic cleaning procedures that you would use on the farm to make sure that you had high quality milk. And so one of the first things to do is to clean the exterior of the milking units and clean surface dirt from outside the claw before you connect it to the clean in place system or you were going to do manual cleaning.

Gary Anderson:

So if we look at basic cleaning procedures, remember this safe handling of chemicals because those dairy chemicals that you use are potentially very dangerous. So use practices to prevent injuries such as gloves and eye protection. You want to reduce the chance of splashing, for example. So one of the most important things to do in cleaning dairy equipment is to pre rinse it. That should be in lukewarm water.

Gary Anderson:

And what that does is removes the milk solids to prevent drying on the surface. And if you use hot water, it denatures the protein causing a protein film. If it's too cold, the fat in the milk will start to solidify and cause a problem. So we talked a little bit about milkstone. And so if you think of milkstone as as a raft floating along and then then you add some stuff, It it collects and makes a a spongy mess and it starts to collect different components.

Gary Anderson:

And soon it becomes buildup on the inside of the milk line. It's very tough to get it cleaned off. So in a bucket system or in a stall barn, you also want to pre rinse. So you want to rinse out the whole bucket milker before you take it to the sink to finish cleaning it. So I I had some data where in a stall barn, they flushed the system five times and they collected milk collected water out of the milking system after each of those successive flushes, and then they sent those to DHIA to get analyzed for milk and protein, fat, lactose, and other solids.

Gary Anderson:

And it wasn't until the fifth flush that protein went to nondetectable. Even at all five flushes, the fat content was still measurable. It decreased with each successive flush, but it just points the need to have make have a clear runoff and rinse to make sure because you can only clean a clean clean of you can only effectively clean a clean surface.

Glenda Pereira:

And we have some guidelines. We wrote a fact sheet here two years ago for some of our milk quality episodes. We can add that to the show notes as well.

Gary Anderson:

Okay. Sounds great. So if we think about the types of soil, we have organic soil, which is fat, protein and other solids in the milk, and they're the major constituents of milk. You want to remove those as soon as possible after milking to prevent sticking to surfaces. And that adhesion is affected by age and dryness and any heating that may have occurred.

Gary Anderson:

And then we have mineral soils, which are dissolved minerals that are a result of precipitation of inorganic salts. With the organic soil, we're going to use an organic cleaner or a dairy cleaner. Usually it's a chlorinated cleaner, which improves the effectiveness. And then for mineral soils, we're going to use an acid rinse to solubilize any mineral residues. So you want to make sure you mix your cleaner according to manufacturer recommendations.

Gary Anderson:

And you want to know that manual and CIP or clean in place cleaners are formulated differently. So usually the manual cleaners are foaming cleaner and aren't as caustic as the CIP cleaners. And and those are non foaming cleaners. And notice I said cleaner rather than detergent.

Glenda Pereira:

Yeah. Have you over the years had any case studies where, you know, you you found out that the temperature or the the cleaner that they were using just wasn't cutting it? And and what were some of the troubleshooting that you potentially helped with? Because that's a challenge on farm, right?

Gary Anderson:

The ones that come to mind immediately were differences in places. You know, the the vacuum, milk line was out of out of it didn't have a good slope to it. And so as that cleaner went around the system, it slowed down and didn't provide even with the air injector didn't provide enough force to get that cleaned off. Testing that out and reset that was very helpful and get that solution in the right place to loop through the system as it was designed to do. So with for a manual cleaner, which would be a bucket milker, for example, which people that are milking goats or or other small ruminants often are using.

Gary Anderson:

You'd soak all parts in warm water for five minutes. You brush it thoroughly and drain and then rinse with an acidified solution and and drain that off. For pipelines, that's usually a circulation cleaner for six to ten minutes. It's a high temperature, a 165 to a 170 degrees at the start and over 120 at the end of the system. And that's pretty critical because if you think about a stall barn in the middle of winter, if it's a big run of of milk line, it can cool down that solution as it traverses through the system and comes back out into the sink.

Gary Anderson:

And so you want to make sure that you've got some type of temperature control. And one of the things that people do is put a plexiglass cover over the sink top to keep heat from radiating out of that solution that comes out. And that could be very, very helpful.

Glenda Pereira:

And it's certainly helpful for farms in Maine too because some farms still milk the cows in their Thai stall, but don't necessarily keep the cows in there. And so, you know, the cows are in there. There's there's a warmer temperature. But then as cows flow out and they're doing the cleaning, it's the temperature certainly changes. So obviously, this is applicable still because some folks still milk in the Thai stall but don't keep the cows there

Gary Anderson:

Right.

Glenda Pereira:

Regularly. You know, they

Gary Anderson:

might only have six or eight stalls on each side that they're using, but it's a function of what's the length of the milk line because that's stainless steel. Can cool down pretty quickly. Yep. And so having a good check on your temperatures, especially with that return in solution, be very helpful to make sure. So the other thing to do is to brush all parts not designed for CIP cleaning, then rinse that with a lukewarm acidified water.

Gary Anderson:

And the thing to remember is if you lay some of those drop tubes into a into a sink and they're flat, they don't drain well. And so you want to make sure what it is inclined. So we used to take stainless steel baskets and put those into the sink and then rest those drop tubes on that so that they would drain effectively and fluid would come through. From a case study standpoint, a lot of people that are packaging their own milk use an s tube off the bottom of the bulk tank. Those are tough to clean because of the geometric shape.

Gary Anderson:

And so I've always recommended hook those up like an extra milking unit. And so that adds the air injector solution and make sure that you clean that s tube out effectively.

Glenda Pereira:

Yeah. Good tip. Yeah. Because you can't really get a brush in there effectively either. So you kind of have to rely on some forced error or some.

Gary Anderson:

There is a brush that you can buy, but a lot of people don't have it. That was one of the things we did in the sanitation class. And then you want to make sure you inspect for cleanliness and and then look at the system from a from a distance. What are the number of 90 degree turns? What are the y turns, high and low points?

Gary Anderson:

And then how often do you replace your inflations, hoses and water hoses? So remember, we talked at the last session about that water system that had a high PI count that was difficult because of the slime inside the water line coming from the well casing over to the milk room. And that can happen with a water hose in a parlor. You want to make sure you're replacing your hoses in the parlor on a regular basis as well. Yep.

Gary Anderson:

And then you want to sanitize your whole unit just before milking. And and so there are we did talk about the brush for the S tube, but there are a whole bunch of specific uses and brushes for different parts of the milking system to brush clean stuff. Then there's also some helpful units to measure the iodine level or the chlorine level in your sanitizer. And then some examples. If you were here looking, I've got a couple of pictures of some of those baskets that we put in the bottom of the sink to incline to get good drainage.

Gary Anderson:

But as you hang those units in the sink, because that's where you're sucking that cleaning solution out of, You want to make sure that there's no kinks in the inflations because that'll reduce the amount of area in the inflations that get cleaned effectively. And then we mentioned the cover of the sink to minimize temperature drop. And sometimes your hoses are too long on your milk line. So if you've got the those milking units in the sink and then there's a long hose that goes into a dip that that can collect water that doesn't get cleaned out effectively. It doesn't drain.

Gary Anderson:

And we talked about the kinks in the milk contact tubing. And then some people still use a nylon quarter turn to shut off the vacuum to reduce the milk to to reduce the vacuum to the milking unit so they could remove the milking machine, And those need to be taken apart and cleaned on a regular basis. But those ought to be completely disassembled, scrubbed, and cleaned on a regular basis. And then all the buckets and strip cups and other bottles and containers that you use ought to be inverted to drain on a rack on a regular basis.

Glenda Pereira:

And there's some equipment that we can use. So we recently did some ATP reading measurements, and and those are quick and easy ways. You know, they're not giving you how you know, a bacterial load, but they're giving you, am I is the current cleaning protocol that I'm following cleaning appropriately? And those are those ATP meters are relatively cheap. So And it's a good way to do a spot check.

Glenda Pereira:

When the ATP meters, what they measure is the light reflection off of whatever surface you're, measuring. So it's just really telling your organic matter buildup. It's not telling you, hey, you know, you have this load of bacteria, etcetera. But it's a good spot check for folks. Stainless steel is obviously the gold standard, and it's really easy to clean.

Glenda Pereira:

But remember that if you are swabbing nipples that are rubber or plastic containers, those always hold a little bit more, organic matter than a stainless steel tool will. So that's just a good way for folks, a cheap way to kind of spot check if if all of this is working appropriately.

Gary Anderson:

Yeah. They tell you whether it's high or low.

Glenda Pereira:

Yeah. Yeah.

Gary Anderson:

And it gives you a good good screening method

Glenda Pereira:

to

Gary Anderson:

to evaluate whether you need to do some further work.

Glenda Pereira:

Yeah.

Gary Anderson:

The the other thing to pay attention to is pipeline gaskets because, I mean, you'll be on a farm and you ask somebody when was the last time you changed gaskets? Never. So you want to make sure that those are changed on a regular basis because they could have buildup of gunk. And so if you're running into a milk quality issue, changing gaskets could be a very helpful procedure to do and oftentimes could help reduce the issue of that situation that you're running into. Yep.

Gary Anderson:

And so we always want to look at those rubber parts to make sure they're not worn out and roughened because those are going to have problems. And those are some of the primary places to evaluate on a farm.

Glenda Pereira:

Yeah. So should I carry rubber gaskets around just in my car? I'm just kidding. But but it's a good it's a good recommendation and and certainly reminding folks. Do did you find that, like, having some record sheets in the milk room to kind of track some of this stuff was helpful?

Glenda Pereira:

Or what can folks, do to implement kind of a reminder for some of that, you know, low hanging fruit replacing stuff?

Gary Anderson:

Well, I tried to do things on a fairly regular schedule. You know, with hoses, they don't cost very much. So I try to, you know, do those at least once or twice a year. So six month intervals, you could replace the hoses in the in the parlor that you're using, place the gaskets every six months. So if you could put those on the calendar so you know that in March, we're gonna do that.

Glenda Pereira:

Right.

Gary Anderson:

That kind of milk quality updated, that that can work out pretty well.

Glenda Pereira:

Yeah. Awesome. And then so we've covered rubber gaskets. And was there one last item in the milk room that we haven't gotten to?

Gary Anderson:

Nothing in the milk room, but I did have some information on clip cows versus non clipped cows, the quality of milk and what the bacteria counts were. Those cow, the milk bacteria levels in clipped cows were significantly lower than the unclipped cows. So I think that's a good procedure. But you don't hear a lot of people clipping cows on a regular basis for the whole herd.

Glenda Pereira:

Awesome. Did you have anything else that you wanted to share with our listeners before we wrap up this episode?

Gary Anderson:

Nothing specific that I'm thinking about.

Glenda Pereira:

Maybe that they can follow-up with you or I about some of these these things. Right?

Gary Anderson:

It'd be good to hear what their evaluation is.

Glenda Pereira:

But we we have some good line guidelines for folks, a place to start, and I'm really thankful that you were able to give us this overview and and kind of give folks a play a landing place to go from here.

Gary Anderson:

Yeah, for sure you can talk about any of these topics for several hours at a time.

Glenda Pereira:

So thank you very much. Yeah, thanks Gary.

Colt Knight:

Yeah, we appreciate having you on the podcast. And for our listeners, if you have questions, comments, and concerns, send us an email at extension.farmcast@maine.edu.