Campbeltowncowboy
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Milk Sample Results
Recently our butterfat has been poor 3.56% and at a meeting many other farmers had low results,in Scotland our main lab was at the center of much fustration over bactoscans with many being well over the penalty band when producers complained they were told the problem wasin their own plant,but when samples were sent to another lab it was found the problem was at Hillington many if not all these samples were corrected, but my question is who checks these labs if they are not accurate producers could be looseing out on millions even if these samples are out by a mere 0.1 over the whole of the Uk.
Is there not a good case for the weights and measures looking into sampling?
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4/7/2008, 8:17
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PEOVEREYE
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MDC or DAIRYCO stuff came in post today seem to remember something in thier offering independent testing of milk .
Fats will be low when grass growth is most rapid.
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4/7/2008, 18:30
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bauldy
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Re: …
Fats will be low when grass is growing rapidly but my milk probably gets tested at the same lab as "ctcb" and my latest butterfat test is the lowest it has ever been and the last four results show a lack of consistency. Its difficult to blame the tanker driver who takes the sample as the tanker has an in line tester. I am also feeding a buffer of 5kg wholecrop barley/peas,2kg bruised oats, 3kg crimped barley with cows doing more that 40 litres getting topped up in the parlour. This is very similar to june last year and the bf's are completely different.
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4/7/2008, 21:41
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Smurf4
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How much fiber in the TMR?
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4/7/2008, 22:26
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bauldy
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Re: …
My wholecrop barley / peas are ensiled when the grain is at the cheesey stage and the peas are over ripe. All the straw is ensiled so there should be a fair bit of fibre in it. The concentrate portion of the ration has a fibre content of more than 10% due to the bruised oats. I am limited with the feeds I can use due to purchasing constraints imposed by my milk buyer ! I had the same issues last June and managed to keep the butterfats higher so it is strange that the butterfats are so low (3.80 %)this June.
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5/7/2008, 17:04
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Campbeltowncowboy
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Just got result of last test in BF has jumped to 4.18 and the strange thing is I have just added brewers grains to the buffer to lift the protein in the mix !!! 
Bauldy do you milk record ?
If so do you or anyone else ever check you bulk sample result with the bulk sample taken by the milk recorder, if you happen to get a bulk sample on the same day they are never the same, fat or protein. 
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5/7/2008, 19:13
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Big Bird
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Re: …
quote:
bauldy wrote:
Its difficult to blame the tanker driver who takes the sample as the tanker has an in line tester.
Watch the in-line tester regarding bactoscans. Milklink had big problems down here, specifically with the first farm on a new tanker shift. They now only use a driver sample, at least from our depot.
We were one farm affected. We could tell from the tanker ticket whether it was an in-line tanker or a driver sample (print font was different). Over a 4 month period we averaged 22 on driver sample, 89 in-line. When they dual sampled us to prove their system was OK, the two samples were never closer than 80 points different, and some were over 300 apart.
We got all our bonus money back in the end, but they were very reluctant to even consider the problem was theirs not ours.
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5/7/2008, 19:34
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Campbeltowncowboy
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Milk Sample Results
Big Bird When First Milk had problems in Scotland some producers got the local dairy engineers to check their plant out and when the engineer had tested about 12 parlours and found nothing wrong he told farmers to get back onto First Milk as there must be something wrong with the sampling, he was then told he would be sued if he didnt stop telling farmers it was dodgy samples 
Where did the problem lie?
The LAB not the farms!!!! 
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5/7/2008, 20:56
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Big Bird
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Re: Milk Sample Results
The farms affected were largely the first farms on either the morning, or more particularly the evening run.
Tankers are only washed once a day unless on a supermarket contract, and rarely after the last of the afternoon pick-ups (approx 3 o'clock). If you were first pick-up in the evening (approx 6 o'clock) there had to be a small amount of unrefrigerated milk residue in the delivery hose from the previous farm that could contribute to your sample.
We were the first farm on the evening shift, and on EOD collection. The next farm on the route was every day. Our samples were consistently higher than normal. The next farms sample was OK if they'd picked us up first, but went up on nights he became first pick-up.
In effect, the first farm's milk rinsed the hose out and any residue could contribute to that farms sample.
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5/7/2008, 21:10
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dairylands
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Milk Sample Results
I'm not to confident about the samples here either. A week ago I had my worst BF ever at 3.65%. This week with no changes to feed (grass and concentrates fed in parlour) and no cows leaving or entering the herd it was 4.22. The protein was also well up. The difference in both would make close to 1.5p per litre. It's not an entirely wonderful system that the milk buyer tests the quality.
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8/7/2008, 7:34
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Campbeltowncowboy
VG88
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Milk Sample Results
mckeague: at First Milk the samples are independantly tested but there are still problems,I know of a cases when double samples were taken and sent to 2 different labs in the same company there were different results ,in some cases the bactoscans were 6x the other, if farmers dont no about this they are often reluctant to talk to other farmers telling them of bad hygiene problems and in many cases they will be penalised when there is no problem.
Every milk buyer or company who test samples must have the same standards.
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8/7/2008, 20:41
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JoulesH
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Milk Sample Results
We actually have the opposite problem - our milk recording (NMR) butterfat results from indiv cows are always markedly below the bulk sample taken on the same day (e.g. herd average 3.92, bulk sample 4.10) and also the averages are below the samples that our milk buyer takes. Very little difference in proteins. As we are paid on the buyer samples and do not sell cows other than culls, not a commercial issue at present, but if we were to start selling heifers it makes our figures look bad (we're in an area where most people are on a constituent contract). I assume it's a sampling technique error (from jars, not inline samplers). Don't want to upset milk recorder, who has been doing it for years. It's also just annoying from a personal pride perspective as it understates our annual production kg fat + protein for the cows. Anyone else have the same problem?
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12/7/2008, 6:01
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MAJESTIC1
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Re: Milk Sample Results
The milk in the jar is not agitated well enough before you get the sample pretty sure that's the problem!
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12/7/2008, 7:34
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Big Bird
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Re: Milk Sample Results
quote:
mckeague wrote:
I think our sampler agitates the milk pretty well by letting air up into the jar, how does everyone else do it??
Very narrow bore needle, same as we use when disbudding calves, in tubing between jar and shut off valve.
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14/7/2008, 11:47
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FiringOnAllFour
Ex97
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Re: Milk Sample Results
quote:
mckeague wrote:
Independant lab testing is the way forward as far as I can see, how though do you get the milk buyer to sign up to this if the current system is suiting them?
Technically, you should be able to if you own the milk buyer.
One of the problems I see with co-ops is that they seem to have trouble making the processing work to the advantage of the farmer. There should be any amount of benefits to the farmer in farmer-owned processing. In short, farmers are not the right people to be sitting on the board of a dairy company.
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14/7/2008, 22:27
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