Cleaning Protocols
While we are milking using our portable milking machine, our cleaning standards are as follows:
Before milking, we sanitize the milking machine with food-grade bleach.
Before hooking up a cow, we clean the cow’s teats with warm, soapy water, strip out milk from each teat to check the milk, and then dry her teats - now she’s ready
Then, we filter the milk before bottling it into our sanitized (using water at 180 degrees Farenheit) glass jars
After milking, we rinse the machine with lukewarm water followed by circulating hot water (170 degrees Fahrenheit) with a one-step clean-in-place solution.
When we are using our milk parlor pipeline, our cleaning standards are as follows:
Before milking, sanitize the milking pipeline with food-grade alkaline detergent (this may be chlorinated or non-chlorinated)
Before hooking up a cow, we clean the cow’s teats with warm, soapy water, strip out milk from each teat to check the milk, and then dry her teats - now she’s ready
Milk is run from the teat cups through a food grade stainless steel pipeline system, including a tube with a spring surrounded by a filter sock (not a literal sock, these are one time use sheaths) to filter the milk, which is then held in another stainless steel bulk tank.
Once all milk is bottled, the pipeline system and teat cups are linked together, rinsed out, washed with a 170 degrees Fahrenheit detergent and water mix recirculated for a set amount of time, then rinsed again with a 170 degrees Fahrenheit acid and water mix, which is then drained. The clean pipeline will remain as a closed system until the sanitize cycle before the next milking.
The bulk tank is cleaned by using the same wash steps above, but the scrubbing is done manually (good ol’ elbow grease).
For Your Consideration:
Our jars are sanitized in a commercial dishwasher with a high temperature rinse of 180 degrees Fahrenheit. That means there’s no need for soap that could change the taste of the milk!
We send our milk out once a month for e. coli and salmonella testing (those tests aren’t safe to run on the farm) and perform coliform and bacterial plate counts at least once a week at our on-farm lab to make sure the milk is safe and that our cleaning system is working as intended. If for some reason we don’t have our on-farm lab available, then we send the milk out monthly for the plate counts and coliform tests. We also occasionally send the milk out for less routine testing for things like listeria, campylobacter, mastitis screening, etc. Those tests are usually done if we add a new cow to the herd.