The author of this post, Tom Wall of Dairy Interactive, is a regular contributor to the magazine. He maintains a blog, “The Almost Perfect Parlor” with Paul Peetz, a territory sales manager for Milk-Rite. See more posts at http://perfectparlor.com Goal #1 for milking cows… Consistency. So… where does consistency come from?
Consistency for cows comes from consistent people. In other words, your cows perform consistently because you and your employees perform consistently.
So how do you assure that your cows are being milked the same way by everyone? It starts by implementing and enforcing some easy-to-follow protocols.
Personally, I think there are three protocols that are almost always overlooked.
And no, I’m not referring to a written milking routine. That being said, every dairy should have a written milking routine.
(If your dairy doesn’t have a written milking routine yet, don’t worry about the following three protocols for now. It’s more important that you provide your milkers with a written milking routine before you do anything else.)
Ok, so back to the three “must-have” parlor protocols…
The three most commonly abused/improvised milking details that I’ve seen are:
- Manual mode use
- Oxytocin use
- Unit re-attachment
It seems that almost everyone who milks someone else’s cows has a different opinion for how they should milk them.
But in defense of the milkers, I don’t really blame them for applying their own criteria to these three details. Why?
Well… if you and your managers don’t tell them what to do when cows won’t milk like they’re “supposed to,” what should milkers do? They have to do something, right? PD
Click here to read the full blog post.
