A clean milking follows six steps in the same order every time: wash your hands with soap and hot water, clean and dry the udder, strip the first 3-4 squirts from each teat into a separate cup, milk into a sanitized bucket, strain through clean cloth, then cool at once. The foremilk carries the highest bacterial count and the stripping also shows early mastitis, so it is the step most worth never skipping.
Part of Dairy Production at Scale
A fixed milking routine is the set of washing, stripping and straining steps done identically at every milking, so that contamination is prevented and a sick quarter is caught within a day.
A Fixed Order Catches Problems Before They Reach The Bucket
Contaminated milk spoils within hours and can transmit tuberculosis, brucellosis and listeria. Nothing downstream, whether cooling or pasteurization, is as cheap as keeping dirt out in the first place. The routine also works as a daily health check: the person who strips and handles each teat every morning notices heat, swelling and clots before anyone else would.
What You Need
- Soap and hot water for hands
- Warm water and a clean cloth per animal (do not share a cloth between animals)
- A strip cup, which can be a dark cup so clots and flakes show
- A steel bucket, scalded before use; steel sanitizes better than wood
- A straining cloth, boiled between uses, and a clean container to strain into
- A place to milk: see Milking Area Design
Method: The Six-Step Milking
Step 1: Wash hands. Soap and hot water, then dry on a clean cloth. Do this again if you touch the animal’s flank, tail or the floor.
Step 2: Clean the udder. Wipe with warm water and a clean cloth, then dry thoroughly. A wet udder lets dirty water run down the teat into the bucket.
Step 3: Strip the foremilk. Squirt the first 3-4 squirts from each teat into the strip cup. Look at it: it should be thin, white and smooth. Clots, flakes, watery milk or a pink tinge mean the quarter should not be milked into the bucket and the animal needs the checks in Mastitis. Discard foremilk or give it to the barn cats, as the parent article says.
Step 4: Milk into a sanitized bucket. A narrow-mouthed vessel keeps out more dust and hair. Scald it with boiling water first; the sanitizing options without chemicals are in Cleaning and Sanitizing Without Chemicals.
Step 5: Strain at once. Pour through boiled cloth into a clean container. Straining removes hair and debris; it does not remove bacteria.
Step 6: Cool. The clock for the 1-2 hour cooling target starts at milking. See Rapid Cooling Without Refrigeration.
Order And Records
- Milk healthy animals first and any animal with a history of mastitis last, so a contaminated hand or cloth does not carry infection forward.
- Keep milk from an animal under treatment out of the pool; it is unsafe, and the treatment course sets how long. Mastitis gives the handling.
- Note every abnormal foremilk with the animal, the quarter and the date. A quarter that is abnormal on two successive days is a problem, not a coincidence.
Common Mistakes
- Skipping the strip cup when in a hurry. It takes under a minute per animal and it is the early-warning test.
- One cloth for the whole herd. It moves bacteria from the one infected udder to the rest.
- Straining as the only sanitation. Cloth catches hair, not bacteria.
- Warm milk left in the bucket while you finish the next cow. The cooling clock is running.
Safety
Large animals kick, and hot water scalds
Tie or restrain the animal before washing the udder, sit or squat with your head clear of the hind leg, and keep scalding water well away from where the animal can step. Milk from an animal showing clots, blood or fever goes in a separate container and is not consumed; unpasteurized milk can also transmit tuberculosis, brucellosis and listeria (see Pasteurization Methods).
What’s Next
- Learn next: Rapid Cooling Without Refrigeration — the next step in the chain
- Combine with: Animal Husbandry — feeding and health of the milking animals