Each time a tanker collects milk from our farm there are many automatic tests done on the quality of the milk. SSC is measured in the number of cells per ml of milk, below 100,000 is determined as healthy and over 200,000 is highly likely to have some sort of stress and possibly infection of some sort in the udder.
Farmers are rewarded for lower SCC and penalised for higher counts. Purely because it can affect the quality and taste of the milk and how well it can be made into other products like cheese and yoghurt. A lower SCC indicates better animal health and less stress on the animal.
Cleanliness in their environment outside in the paddock and hygiene of the milking platform also contribute to elevated SSC counts. Reducing stress on the cows by being kind to them and keeping clean environments greatly reduces SSC counts and having a milking plant that is regularly serviced along clean rubbers that are regularly changed and in good working order all play an important role.
We only employ staff who are kind to our animals and understand the importance of hygiene. Milking our ladies once a day reduces the stress on them and ensuring all their nutritional needs are met are also how we achieve one of the lowest SCC counts and we rank in the top 4% for the lowest SCC counts for our milk supplier Fonterra.
The upside of this is happy cows producing more milk of a higher quality that can easily be used for infant formula and to make other milk based products like cheese and yoghurt.
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