During a producer roundtable at the National Mastitis Council annual meeting, Jan. 27-30, in Charlotte, North Carolina, three dairymen defined the ways they achieve low somatic cell counts (SCC) with farm protocols, training and implementing new technologies.
Christian Hill Dairy LLC
Patrick Christian is part of a family-owned dairy that has been running for 107 years. His parents, four brothers and 44 employees help run Christian Hill Dairy in Lomira, Wisconsin. The dairy decided to expand the parlor rather than start fresh in 2005 and installed a BouMatic double 10. In 2014, they added on to the parlor again to operate a BouMatic SmartDairy double 24. The third addition was in 2023 when they expanded to a double 50.
At Christian Hill Dairy, their mastitis detection program rewards employees based on low SCC to ensure all employees understand their impact on milk quality and are motivated to contribute. Employees receive a bonus for each mastitis cow they identify and $200 for maintaining an SCC of 150 or lower. To ensure accuracy, employees undergo intensive training in using the California Mastitis Test (CMT), including how to interpret results directly from the vial.
“The cow mover also gets money, but the milkers get 50 dollars more than the cow pusher for doing more work,” Christian said.
In addition to incentivizing employees based on their roles, Christian Hill Dairy also equips them with tools to support early mastitis detection and treatment.
“We have our own lab on-site, so all the new infections go on the microplates, for better detection of different strains of mastitis,” Christian said. “The employees are in charge of pulling that cow because we have automated sort gates, then we treat them accordingly.”
To ensure consistency and accountability across different team members and shifts, the dairy does monthly trainings and has a bilingual veterinarian come in to do more hands-on training.
“It seems like they listen better when they have the veterinarian come in rather than their boss,” Christian said. “We have good managers who have a good rapport with the employees, and we have had long-time employees because of it.”
Highbrighton and Barrington dairies
Pete Gelber grew up in mid-upstate New York with his siblings, working on a dairy farm. He later went to Cornell University and then bought some dairies in southwest Georgia. Between his two dairies, he milks 13,600 cows 3X per day. The 120 rotary milks 900 cows per hour and averages an SCC of 54,000, and his two parallel parlors (double 35 and 42) make 6.45 turns per hour and average an SCC of 99,000.
Gelber’s view on milk quality is that extra labor can pay big dividends. The key to having success is having lots of people help. Extra people can increase throughput and milk quality, which allows for their milking routine to run smoothly and come out with a profit.
Gelber said his teams maintain strong communication and training through monthly meetings with each shift. New milkers are trained by shadowing an experienced employee for about a week before working on their own. He also said training employees the proper way can significantly impact milk production. Having employees who are efficient and well-trained makes a difference, leading to increased milk production and improved economic outcomes.
Different milking practices can directly impact milk production, Gelber explained. He sets high expectations for his employees to take their time during the milking process. While managing herd breaks presents challenges, a dedicated team helps ensure the milking process goes smoothly and ultimately leads to higher milk production output.
Gelber also said that low milk flow kills production and speed. He described their milking routine as highly structured, with mature cows going to the rotary parlor and heifers – who milk out faster – making up about half of the cows in the parallel parlors.
“We have five guys in each parlor. They strip the whole line and then they come back and hang machines,” Gelber said. “They are not allowed to pull machines off until every machine is hung, then every other cow is dipped. Once those cows are dipped, then they can pull off what is left. The key to it is stripping the cows; if you do not strip the cows, then they are not going to let milk down.”
Once clinical mastitis cases are identified and recorded, the information is communicated to the rest of the team. Protocols are in place to ensure consistent follow-through, and a three-strike rule is applied if mastitis is not properly found. This is why Gelber stresses the importance of highly trained employees.
“We have our milkers flag the cows and do a CMT test on them and sample the cows,” Gelber said. “My wife runs a rudimentary lab, and gram-negative cows get ignored, and the other ones get treated. The ones that are not worth treating go into a leper herd with the Staph aureus cows.”
Heglar Creek Dairy
Adam Beard manages Heglar Creek Dairy in Raft River, Idaho, which was established in the early 1990s. The dairy ships about 220,000 pounds every day, while milking 1,850 cows at their conventional dairy and 1,050 cows in their 18 Lely automated milking barn.
Heglar Creek Dairy installed a turbo spray system, which improved milk quality and consistently kept somatic cell counts below 100,000. The turbo spray system also eliminated a step for the milkers, which improved efficiency and milk production.
While technology has helped streamline operations, Beard emphasizes that strong leadership and a well-established culture are just as critical to success.
“Our parlor manager is a lady, and her husband has been with the dairy for 31 years, so he has helped establish a culture on the dairy. One thing I have learned in my career is that if you do not establish a culture, it will establish itself, and that’s never fun,” Beard said. “I couldn’t be more proud of the guys I work with. They continue to do weekly meetings with me and the guys at the robot dairy because they do work separate from the parlor crew. I will also meet with the guys who treat the hospitals.”
The conventional dairy relies on the milking employees for mastitis detection, and an Excel sheet is used to track and manage cow health. Beard explained that at the conventional dairy, milkers identify cows with clinical mastitis and sort them out. Then every morning, the hospital crew moves these cows to a separate parlor that milks both fresh and hospital cows. The automated milking dairy uses a mastitis detection system to monitor somatic cell counts. This system generates a list of cows with abnormal readings for the veterinarians to check out.
“Our protocol is to send a sample to the lab of every cow going in the hospital pen. Every cow also gets sampled coming out of the hospital pen. In the meanwhile, we have our own little incubator with TNT agar biplates while we are waiting to get our lab results back. We give the cows Banamine on day one while we are waiting for the 24-hour incubation on the milk plates on-farm,” Beard said. “The positive cows are started on a treatment protocol, while the negative cows get two more days of Banamine and are observed at the robotic dairy. The robots tell us way more information, which is helpful but also a bit stressful because by the time we get the sample back, there is a whole new group of cows to assess. We will also track cows on what’s called the ‘connectivity’ alarm list. The robots know if they are treated, so they can automatically separate their milk.”
Beard added that they are gradually transitioning the automated milking herd to include more Jersey cows. Experimenting with the Jersey cows at the automated dairy showed they handled automated milking better, were easier to train and lay in the freestall beds more comfortably.
Training the employees to meet Beard’s high standards for cleanliness is important at Heglar Creek Dairy. Monthly maintenance is performed on all milk barns, including both the automated and conventional facilities. Daily pen maintenance helps keep pens dry, with compost used to maintain clean conditions. At the automated milking dairy, cows are moved to one side of the pen every morning for cleaning. An automated chain scraper also runs through each barn to keep the floors clean.
