Dairy
farming is a class of agricultural or an animal husbandry, enterprises, for
long-term production of milk, which may be either processed on-site or
transported to a diary factory for processing and eventual retail sale.
Most
dairy farms sell the male calves born by their cows, usually for year
production, breeding depending on quality of the Bull calf rather than raising
non-milk –producing stock. Many dairy
farms also grow their own feed,
typically including corn, alfalfa. And hay.
This is fed directly to the cows, or is stored as silage for use during
the winter seasons. Additional dietary
supplements are added to the feed to increase quality mink production.
History
of dairy farming
Hand
Milking
Until
the late 1800s the milking of the cow was done by hand. In the United States, several large dairy operations
existed in some northeastern states and in the west, that involved as many
several hundred cows, but an individual milker could not be expected to milk
more than a dozen cows a day. Smaller operations predominated.
The
first milking machines were an extension of the traditional milk pail. The early miler device fit on top of a
regular milk pail and sat on the floor under the cow. Following each cow being milked, the bucket
would be dumped into a holding tank.
This developed into the surge hanging milker. Prior to milking a cow, a
large wide leather strap called a surcingle was put around the cow, across the
cow’s lower back The mailer device and collection tank hung underneath the cow
from the strap. This innovation allowed
the cow to move around naturally during the milking process rather than having
to stand perfectly still over a bucket on the floor.
With
the availability of electric power and
suction milking machines, the production levels that were possible in stanchion
barns increased but the scale of the operations
continued to be limited by the labor intensive nature of the milking
process. Attaching and removing milking machines involved repeated heavy
lifting of the machinery and its contents several times per cow and pouring of
the milk into milk cans. As a result, it was rare to find single-farmer
operations of more than 50 head of cattle.
Milking
pipeline
Main
article : Milking pipe line
The
next innovation in automatic milking was the milk pipeline. This uses a
permanent milk return pipe and a second vacuum pipe that encircles the barn or
milking parlor above the rows of cows, with quick-seal entry ports above each
cow. By eliminating the need for the
milk container, the milking device shrank in size and weight to the point where
it could hang under the cow, help up only by the sucking force of the milker
nipples on the cow’s udder. The milk is
pulled up into the milk-return pipe by the vacuum system, and then flows by
gravity to the millhouse vacuum-breaker that puts the milk in the storage
tank. The pipeline system greatly
reduced the physical labor of milking since the farmer no loger needed to carry
around huge heavy buckets of milk from each cow.
The pipeline
allowed barn length to keep increasing and expanding, but after a pint farmers
started to milk the cows in large groups, filling the barn with one-half to one
third of the herd, milking the animal, and then emptying and refilling the
barn. As herd sizes continued to
increase, this evolved into the more efficient milking parlor.
Milking
parlors
Innovation
in milking focused on mechanizing the
milking parlour to maximise throughput
of cows per operators, which streamlined the milking process to permit cows to
be milked as if on an assembly line, and to reduce physical stresses on the
farmers by putting the cows on a
platform slightly above the person milking the cows to eliminate having to
constantly bend over. Many older and
smaller farms still have the-stall or stanchion barns, but worldwide a majority
of commercial farms have parlours.
The
milking parlor allowed a concentration of money
into a small area, so that more technical monitoring and measuring
equipment could be devoted to each milking
station in the parlor. Rather
that simply milking into a common pipeline for example, the parlor can be
equipped with fixed measurement systems that monitor milk volume and record
milking statistics for each animals.
Tags on the animals allow the parlor system to automatically
identify each animals as it enters the
parlor.
More
modern farms use recessed parlors, where the milker stands in a recess such
that his arms are at the level of the cow’s udder. Recessed parlors can be herringbone, where
the cows stand in two angled rows either side of the recess and the milkier
accesses the udder from the rear or, more recently, rotary (or carousel) where
the cows are on a raised circular platform, facing the centre of the circle,
and the platform rotates while the milker stands in one place and accesses the
udder from the rear. There are many other
styles of milking parlors which are less common.
Herringbone
and parallel parties
In
herringbone and parallel parlors, the milker generally milks one row at a
time. The milker will move a row of cows
from the holding yard into the milking
parlors, and milk each cow in the that row.
Once all or most of the milking machines have been removed from the
milked row, the milker release the cows to their feed. A new group of cows in then loaded into the now vacant side and the process
repeat unit all cows are milked.
Depending on the size of the milking parlor, which normally is the
bottleneck, these rows of cows can range from four to sixty at the time.
Rotary
parlors
In
rotary parlors, The cows are loaded one at a time onto the platform as it
slowly rotates. The milker stands near
the entry to the parlor and puts the cups on the cows as they move past. By the time the platform has completed
almost a full rotation, another milker
or machine removes the cups and the cow steps backwards off the platform and
then walks to her feed.
Automatic
milker take-off
It can
be harmful to an animals for it to be over-milked past the point where the udder has stopped
releasing milk. Consequently the milking
process involves not just applying the milker, but also monitoring the process
to determine when the animals has been milked out and the milker should be
removed. It also increased the number of
animals to be monitored simultaneously by the farmer. The automatic take-off system was developed
to remove the milker from the cow when the milk flow reaches a present,
relieving the farmers of the duties of carefully watching over 20 or more
animals being milked at the same time.
Fully
Automated robotic milking
In the
year 1980 and 1990s robotic milking systems were developed and introduced
(principally in the EU)These of these systems are now in routine operation. In
these systems the cow has high degree of autonomy to choose her time of milking
within pre-defined windows. These system
are generally limited to intensively managed systems although research
continues to match them to the requirements of grazing cattle and to develop
sensors to detect animal health and fertility automatically.
History
of milk preservation methods
Keeping
milk cool helps presser it. When
windmills and well pumps were invented, one of its first uses on the farm
besides providing water for animals was for cooling milk, to extended the
storage life before being transported to the town market. The naturally cold underground water
would be continuously pumped into tub or
other containers of milk set in the tub to cool after milking. This method of milk cooling was extremely
popular before the arrival of electricity and refrigeration. The milk is extracted from the cow’s udder by
flexible rubble sheaths known as liner or inflations that are surrounded by a
rigid air chamber. A pulsating flow of
ambient air and vacuum is applied to the inflation’s air chamber during the
milking process. When ambient air is allowed to enter the chamber, the vacuum
inside the inflation causes the inflation to collapse around the cow’s teat,
squeezing the milk out of teat in a similar fashion as a body calf’ mouth
massaging the teat. When the vacuum is
reapplied in the chamber the flexible
rubber inflation relaxes and opens up, preparing for the next squeezing
cycle.
It
takes the average cow three to five minutes to give her milk. Some cows are faster or slower. Slow-milking
cows may take up to fifteen minutes to let down all their milk. Milking speed is only minority related to the
quantity of milk the cow produces – milking speed is a separated factor from
milk quantity; milk quantity is not determinative of milking speed. Because most milkers milk cattle in groups,
the milker can only process a group of cows at the speed of the slowest milking cow.
For this reasons, many farmers will cull slow-milking cows.
The
extracted milk passed through a strainer and plate heat exchangers before
entering the tank, where it can be
stored safely for a few days at approximately 3*c or around 42 *F( 6*c). At pre-arranged times,
a milk truck arrives and pumps the milk from the tanks for the transport to a
dirary factory where it will be pasteurized and processed into may products.
Animals
waste from large dairies
As
measured in phosphorus, the waste output of 5000 cows roughly equals a
municipality of 70000 people. In the
U.S. , dairy operations with more than 1000 cows meet the EPA definition of
a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding
Operation) and are subject to EPA REGULATION.
For example, in the San Joaquin Valley of California a number of dairies
have been established on a very large scale.
Each dairy consists of several modern milking parlor setups operated as
single enterprise. Each milking parlor
is surrounded by a set of 3 or 4 loafing barns housing 1500 or 2000 cattle. Some
of the larger dairies have planned10 or more series of loafing barns and
milking parlors in this arrangement, so that the total operation may include as
many as 15000 or 20000 cows. The milking
process for theses dairies is similar to a smaller diary with a single milking
parlor but repeated several times. The
size and concentration of cattle creates major environmental issues associated
with manure handling and disposal which requires substantial areas of cropland
( a ratio of 5 or 6 cows to the acre, or several thousand acres for dairies of this
size) for manure spreading and dispersion, or several-acre methane digesters.
Air pollution form methane gas associated with manure management also is a
major concern. As a result, Proposals to
develop dairies of this size can be controversial and provoke substantial
opposition from environmentalists including the Sierra Club and local activities.
The
potential impact of large diaries was demonstrated when a massive manure spill occurred
on a 5000 cow dairy in Upstate New York,
contaminating a 20 mile (32km) stretch of the Black River, and killing
375000 fish. On Aug 10 2005 a manure
storage lagoon collapsed releasing several million gallons of manure into the
Black River. Subsequently the New York
Department of Environmental Conservation mandated a settlement package of $2.2
million against the dairy.
Use of
hormones
Future
information: Bovine somatotropin
It is
possible to maintain higher milk production by injecting cows with growth
hormones known as recombinant BST or BGH,
but this is controversial due to its effects on animal and possibly
human health. The European Union, Japan,
Australia New Zealand and Canada have banned its use due to such concerns. However, no such prohibition exists in the
US, where approximately 22% dairy cows
are treated in this way. The US, Food
and Drug Administration maintains that no ”significant difference” has been found
milk from treated and non-treated cows but based on consumer concerns several
milk purchasers and resellers have elected not to purchase milk produced with rBST.
Management
of the dairy herd.
Modern
dairy farmers use milking machines and sophisticated plumbing systems to
harvest and store the milk from the
cows, which are usually milked twice or thrice daily. During the warm months, in the northern
hemisphere, cow may be allowed to graze in their pastures, both day and night,
and are brought into the barn only to be milked. Many barns also incorporate
tunnel ventilation into the architecture
of the barn structure. This ventilation
system is highly efficient and involves opening both ends of the structure
allowing cool air to blow through the building.
Farmers with this type of structure keep cows inside during the summer
months to prevent sunburn and damage to udders.
During the winter months, especially in northern climates, the cows may
spend the majority of their times inside the barn, which is warmed by their
collective body heat. Even in winter,
the heat produced by the cattle requires the barns to be ventilated for cooling
purposes. Many modern facilities, and
particularly those in tropical areas, keep all animals inside at all times to
facilities, and particularly those in tropical areas, keep all animals inside
at all times to facilities, and particularly those in tropical areas, keep all
animals inside at all times to
facilitate herd management. Housing the
cow can be either loose housed or stalls (Called cow cubicles in UK).
In the
southern hemisphere milking animals are more likely to spent most of their
loves outside on pasture. (citation needed) there is little research available
on dimensions required for cow stalls, and
much housing can be out of date, however
increasingly companies are making farmers aware of the benefits, in
terms of animal welfare, health and milk production
The
production of milk requires that the cow be in lactation, which is a result of
the cow having given birth to a calf. The cycle of insemination. Pregnancy
parturition, and lactation followed by a “dry”
period before insemination can recur, requires a period of 12 to 16
months for each cow. Dairy operations therefore included both the production of
milk and the production of calves are either castrated and raised as steers for
beef production or raised for veal. As the size of herds has increased, the conditions
in which large number of veal calves are raised, fed and marketed on larger
dairies also have provoked controversy among animal right activists.
A dairy
is a facility for the extraction and processing of animal milk –mostly from
goats or cows, but also from buffalo, sheep horses or camels-for human consumption.
Typically it is a cheese.
Structure
of the industry
While
most countries produce their own milk products, the structure of the dairy
industry tarries in different parts of the world. In less developed countries
the producer generally sells directly to
the public , whereas in major milk
–producing countries most milk is distributed through wholesale markets,. In Ireland
and Australia, for example, farmers co-operatives own many of the large –scale
processors, while in the united states farmers and processors do business
through individual contracts.
As in
many other branches of the food industry, dairy processing in the major dairy
producing countries has become increasingly concentrated, with fewer but larger
plants operated by fewer workers. This is notably the case in the United
States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
Plants
producing liquid milk and products with
short shelf life, such as yogurts, creams and soft cheese, tend to be
located on the outskirts of urban centers close to consumer markets. Plants, manufacturing items with longer shelf
life, such as butter, milk powders cheese and whey powders, tend to be situated
in rural areas closer to the milk supply.
Most
large processing plants tend to specialize in a limited range of products. Exceptionally, however, large plants
producing a wide range of products are still common in Eastern Europe, a holdover
from the former centralized, supply-driven concept of the market.
As
processing plants grow fewer and larger, they tend to acquire bigger, more
automated and more efficient equipment.
While this technological tendency keeps manufacturing cost lower, the
need for long-distance transportation
often increases the environmental impact.
See
dairy farming and dairy cattle for more information
When
it became necessary to milk larger numbers of cows, the cows would be brought
to a shed or barn that was set up with bails (stalls) where the cows could be
confined while they were milked. One persons
could milk more cows this way, as many as 20 for a skilled worker. But having cows standing about in the yard and shed waiting to be
milked is not good for the cow, as she needs as much time in the paddock
grazing as it possible . It is usual to
restrict the twice daily milking to a maximum of an hour and a half each time.
It makes no difference whether one milks 10 to 1000 cows the milking time
should not exceed a total of about three hours each day for any cow.
As
herd sizes increased there was more need to have efficient milking machines
sheds, milk storage facilities(vats) bulk-milk transport and shed cleaning
capabilities and the means of getting cows from paddock to shed and back.
Farmers
found that cows would abandon their grazing area and walk towards the milking
area when the time came for milking.
This is not surprising as, in the flush of the milking season, cows
presumably get very uncomfortable with udders engorged with milk, and the
place of relief for them is the milking
shed.
As
herd numbers increased so did the problems of animal health. In new
Zealand tow approaches to this problems
have been used. The first was improved
veterinary medicines (and the government regulation of the medicines) that the
farmer could use. The other was the
creation of veterinary clubs
Where
groups of farmers would employ a
veterinarian (Vet) Full time and share those services throughout the year. It was in the vet’s interest to keep the
animals healthy and reduce the number of calls from farmers, rather than to ensure that the farmer needed to call for
service and pay regularly.
Most
dairy farmers milk their cows with absolute regularity at a minimum of twice a
day with some high-producing herds milking up to four times a day to lessen the weight of large volumes of milk in the
udder of the cow. This daily milking
routine goes on for about 300 to 320 day per year that the cow that the cow
stays in milk. Some small herds are milked once a day for about the last 20
days of the production cycle but this is not usual for large herds. It a cow is left unmilked just once she is
likely to reduced milk-production almost immediately and the rest of the season
may see her dried off(giving no milk) and still consuming feed for no
production. However, once-a day milking
is now being practiced more widely in Zew Zealand for profit and lifestyle
reasons. This is effective because the fall in milk yield is at least partially
offset by labour and cost saving from milking once per day. This compares to some intensive farm systems
in the United States that milk three or more times per day due to higher milk
yields per cow and lower marginal labor costs.
Farmers
who are contracted to supply liquid milk for human consumption(as opposed to
milk for processing into butter, cheese, and so on – see milk often have to
manage their herd so that the contracted
number of cows are in milk the year round, or the required minimum milk output
is maintained. This is done by mating
cows outside their natural mating time so that period when each cow in the herd
is giving maximum production it in
rotation throughout the year.
Northern
hemisphere farmers who keep cows in
barns almost all the year usually manage their herds to give continuous production of milk so that they get
paid all year round. In the southern
hemisphere the cooperative dairying
systems allow for two months on no productivity because their systems
are designed to talk advantage of
maximum gross and milk production in the
spring and because the milk processing
plants pay bonuses in the dry (winter) seasons to carry the farmers
though the mid-winter break from milking. It also means that cows have a rest
from milk production when they are most heavily pregnant. Some year-round milk farms are penalized
financially for over-production at any
time in the year by being unable to sell
their overproduction at current prices.
Artificial
Insemination (AI) is common in all high- production herds.
