Farmer Focus: Rising Bactoscan prompts parlour checks
Colin Murdoch © Jeff Holmes First, I have to admit to being “influenced” by something I saw on social media, and impulse buying it. Amazingly, it actually worked!
We were due to change liners in the parlour, and a friend sent a video of someone using a car upholstery tool to remove the old liners really easily.
See also: 6 ways to reduce the risk of high bactoscan in bulk milk
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A quick scroll on a certain online shopping platform and it was delivered the next day. I can honestly say I’ve never changed liners so easily; it was nine quid well spent.
We’ve been having a bit of bother with inconsistent Bactoscan results recently, so we’ve changed all silicone pipework in the parlour too, to see if that helps.
Our thresholds for penalty dropped to 30,000 cells/ml earlier this year and at the time I thought nothing of it, as we were always in the low teens. However, since then we seem to have jumped into mid-20,000 cells/ml, so it’s getting a bit too close for comfort.
Interestingly, our dairy service engineer indicated the problem isn’t isolated to us.
I would very much like to know if the milk tanker samples are refrigerated all the way to the laboratories, which I believe now happens in England, as opposed to only the last 20 miles previously.
Unfortunately, the weather has put paid to zero grazing for this year. Following a decent spell for drilling cereals, we had almost an inch of rain a day for the next week, and I was beginning to think I should have left the seed in the bag.
It dried up briefly to let us clear another field with a heavy cover before we finally admitted defeat, and the cows are now on full winter ration.
While we’ve had dry cows in for three weeks prior to calving this year, all the rest are now back inside too. Youngstock continue to graze, probably more for exercise than energy, but the weather is still quite mild.
Having been let down by a roofing contractor and waited months to get storm damage repaired, it was good to be recommended another firm who have got the job done in no time.
We’ve also replaced the first bay of the main cow shed with completely transparent sheets. It looks great, so much so that I think we’ll need to save up to do the rest of it.