Milking Stands

[babsbag]

Wasn't worried about the cleanliness of the milk but do you dip inflations between goats to prevent mastitis? Just wondering about the concern of passing mastitis between goats if one has a sub-clinical infection that you haven't caught.

 

[Epona142]

Ah, of course. Every doe's milk is visually checked in a strip cup before milking and wiped down before and after, as well as teat dipped, but there is normally no extensive cleaning of the inflations between does, no. The risk is certainly there of course, however it's fairly minimal, and in four years we've not had any mastitis spread between does. We have of course had cases of mastitis here and there, perhaps one or two a year; luckily since I spend so much time with these does it gets caught fairly quickly, and they are taken "offline" and milked at the end of milking (or hand milked), to indeed prevent the passing of infection, and the inflations are indeed cleaned between does (if there happens to be more than one "offline" doe) in that case.

 

[babsbag]

I was reading an article a few months back about mycoplasma and how it almost wiped out an entire goat herd in California. All they said was that there had a been a breakdown of the normal sanitary milking practices in the dairy. I wish they had said more. Right now with a bucket milker I put the inflations in a bucket of bleach water between does but that is more to just keep them clean while I switch does and get the next one ready to milk; I wasn't really sure how the "real" diaries handled it.

 

[Epona142]

It'll vary wildly place by place, that's for sure. I tell people, ask five goat keepers a question, get ten answers, and they might all be "correct" in their own way.

Breeders/keepers can be very close-mouthed about incidents like that, which is a real shame, it's part of the reason why there is so little information to be had about many serious issues. I understand that position though obviously - it's entirely too easy for those who don't understand fully the dairy business to go on the "attack" and cause problems for you on the whole, especially in this fascinating Internet era. Everything has its downsides.

I certainly think that your method of dipping in bleach is a good precautionary measure.

 

[babsbag]

Someone said I was supposed to milk with dry inflations. Now if I am going to dip inflations between goats how in the world will they be dry? I don't have an entire day to milk. Also, I am a little concerned about a minute amount of bleach ending up in the milk so looking at other ideas. But I certainly don't want to loose a herd to something that could be prevented either. Mastitis could be very bad but Mycoplasma could destroy me (and the goats).

 

[Epona142]

I do believe that is correct, you do want dry inflations - so sorry! And you certainly don't want bleach in your milk. I should probably get out of the sun more often, my apologies! What you might try is mixing up a mild bleach solution and pouring it over high quality paper towels and using those to wipe out the inflations between does. Then you are still getting some degree of disinfecting without going for the full on drenching.

However, we have relied on the described regime for years and have had no issues relating to it. Granted, that's certainly no guarantee by a long shot, and in the end, we all have to decide to do what we think is best - unless you're selling the product, then we have to do what the state tells us to do!

 

[Hillaire]

this thread rocks! getting lots of info and can't wait to build my milk stand for my oberhaslis