- Keeping cool: The chiller has had a month or two off – has it had a maintenance check over the past 12 months? Try running the chiller up on water first to make sure the refrigeration is working correctly.
- Low litres: Low milk volumes in early
- pick-ups lower the impact of the dilution factor. Detergent/teat-spray residue, excess water – take care to do the right things to avoid an early season grade. Is your detergent labelled as NPE and QAC-free? If not, get in touch with your detergent rep to check that it’s okay to use. Make sure your plant is drained properly before beginning milking early in the season – a little extra water goes a long way in low volume milk pick-ups.
- Agitating: Make sure the first milking that goes in the vat for supply actually hits the agitators. If it doesn’t, there can be issues with milk freezing leading to bacterial issues and water grades.
- Rubberware: In tight times it’s tempting to stretch liners beyond their recommended guidelines for number of milkings (2500 for black rubber liners), which can lead to grading and increased mastitis. Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.
- Get it checked: Milking machine checks are another to-do list item that can be sacrificed when looking to cut costs. If you spend $600 on a machine test and it saves you 10 cases of mastitis in a season, it’s more than paid for itself. Get any identified faults sorted out early. For farmers settling into a new farm this season, some milk processors offer free pre-season plant checks. Detergent reps are also another good resource to tap into for a pre-season plant check.
- Valuable downtime: Make the most of
- not having milking time pressure and
- check out the parts of the plant that are often too time-consuming to do when milking – milk line seals, delivery line seals, plate coolers, milk pumps, jetters. In a rotary, when was the gland last serviced? Milk pump mechanical seals should be replaced annually and now is a great time to do
- that. Go through the last dairy inspection report and fix any structural issues that were identified before the cows start coming through the dairy again.
Pre-season plant pointers
Ryan Hall, manager of the QCONZ farm team, has some tips for getting new season milk production off to a good start.
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