The milking process in a dairy farm is crucial to ensuring high-quality milk production. It involves several steps that must be carried out meticulously to maintain animal health, hygiene, and productivity. Understanding the process is essential for farm efficiency and the safety of the milk produced.

The first step in the milking process is preparing the cows for milking. This includes ensuring the cows are calm and comfortable, as stress can affect milk yield and quality. Cows are usually milked in a clean, quiet environment to reduce agitation.

Next, the cow’s udder is cleaned thoroughly to prevent contamination. This is done with sanitized cloths or an antiseptic solution. The cleanliness of the udder is vital in preventing bacterial infections that could compromise the milk’s safety and quality.

After cleaning, the milker inspects the udder for any signs of mastitis or injury. This helps identify any potential health issues before milking begins. Ensuring the cow’s udder is healthy is essential for both animal welfare and milk quality.

Once the udder is checked, milking begins. Mechanical milking machines are often used, though some small farms may still use manual milking. The milking machine must be properly adjusted to prevent injury to the cow and ensure a smooth flow of milk.

During milking, it is important to monitor the milk for any abnormalities such as blood, clots, or an off smell. Any abnormal milk is discarded immediately to ensure it does not contaminate the rest of the milk.

After the milking process, the cows are provided with fresh feed and water to maintain their health and milk production levels. Regular feeding schedules help maintain optimal milk yield. It’s important to ensure cows have a balanced diet to meet their nutritional needs.

the milk is stored in clean, temperature-controlled containers to preserve its freshness. The milk is immediately cooled to prevent bacterial growth and maintain its quality.

This step is essential to ensure the milk reaches consumers safely. This article will treat the milking process in a diary farm.

Management of Milking Cows

Dairy cows are creatures of habit. They respond well to routine procedures. Milking is usually carried out twice a day – early morning and late afternoons 5.30am and 3.30pm.

More than twice a day milking can be done. This has been shown to increase milk production but the labour involved is high. Between the two milking periods animals are either grazed, or fed concentrate in pens or both.

In the tropics, it is advisable to graze animals in the mornings and evenings because of high ambient temperatures during the day.

Grazing should not be done too early in the morning, however, to preset bloat which is cause by cattle consuming much grasses or grasses covered with dew in the early mornings. Concentrate feeding of dairy cow is done in relation to its milk production.

Milking Systems

There are two milking methods.

1. Hand Milking

This is the method in use by our traditional herdsmen. Hand milking is laborious, time consuming, inefficient, leads to injury to maker, high incidence of milk contamination which may be by the cow or herdsmen or by dust, dirt and insects.

It is however cheap. Hand milking is also practiced with certain breeds of cattle e.g. Sahiwal which ahs a large teat that cannot enter the milking cup.

2. Machine Milking

This method is more efficient since large numbers of cows can be milked within a short time. Machine milking usually takes a short time.

The milk obtained from machine milking is clean and free of contaminants. It is however expensive to acquire the machines instead, operate and maintain them. The operation and maintenance also needs expert.

Milking Procedure

The milking process normally occurs in a step by step orderly manner. The process is as follows:

1. Both the milkers hand and equipment should be cleaned and sanitized to prevent contamination by micro-organisms.

2. Udder and teat of cow should then be washed with warm water and a sanitizing solution and massage. It is advisable to be individual napkins or disposable paper to clean the udder after washing. Washing of udder stimulates milk ejection and prevent contamination.

3. Where hand milking is done it is rubbed with vaseline in order to soften the teat.

4. Whether by hand or machine milking the teatis pressed for the fist few drops of milk that come into the cup to check whether it is pure or not.

If there appears to be any cloth, pus or blood stain then the cow is having mastitis. The cow should therefore be milked last and the milk thrown away.

5. For uncontaminated milk the cow is then hand milked or the milking machine is attached gently to the teat and the animal is milked.

6. After milking the machine is removed gently from the teat as soon as milk flow stops and the machine is then detached.

7. The teat is then dipped in an antiseptic solution to prevent contamination.

Some Bad Traits in Milking Cows

Bad traits exhibited by cows during milking are numerous. However, some are highlighted in the following sections.

1. Kicking: Some cow can kick when being milked. This may occur as a result of the following.

i. rough handling by the milker
ii. over milking
ii. injury

Such cows will no more remain quite for milking and will also not let down their milk. In order to prevent this, cows should be given concentrate during milking. The calf should be allowed near the cow.

2. Milk Leakage: Sometimes the Sphinter’s muscles gets weak, the teat opening will therefore not close tightly enough. This lead to milk leakage. Such animals should be culled.

3. Hard Milking: Sometimes the teat could be too hard and milking becomes difficult particularly with hand milking such cows should be sold.

Milk Production Pattern

Milk production of well fed and managed diary cows follows a definite pattern. There is first an increase which gets to a peak, it stablilizes at this point for a period of time then declines until the animal dries up . For improperly fed or managed animals the milk production does not follow any particular pattern.

Average of the peak period of lactation is about 30 days in the tropical animal. This is because of poor feeding and watering, high temp, pest and disease attack.

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