9/24/2012
Milk Quality
Mastitis is a universal problem that all dairy producers struggle with to varying degrees. Dairy farm management practices that have shown to best improve udder health are: wearing gloves during milking, using automatic take-offs, using post milking teat dipping, milking problem cows last, yearly inspection of the milking system, and keep cows standing after milking.
Other practises associated with lower SCC were the use of a free stall system, sand bedding, cleaning the calving pen after each calving, surveillance of dry-cow udders for mastitis, use of blanket dry-cow therapy, parenteral selenium supplementation, udder hair management, and frequent use of the California Mastitis Test. Read more about the effect of udder health management practices here.
On this page we have gathered links to articles and tools to improve milk quality and udder health on farm.