Milk tainted dropped everyday for 2 weeks. Thoughts.

[mcollier]

Evening all hope your week is better than ours.

As the heading says, milk is tainted.

We put in a new parlour 5 months ago all has been going very well until 2 weeks ago when the milk was rejected for been tainted.

First though was it could be the parlour, had the company who installed it back to check it over and everything was fine.

Next port of call was bulk tank, some adjustments were made to the washing system/ chemical balance but still tainted.

Clamp silage test came back fine.
( cows are currently out in the day in on a night )
We didn't have the bales tested as they are good bales but that might be another thing to test.

Sent off a bulk tank test and hopefully will find our more tomorrow.
Individual pot test done tonight will send them off first thing tomorrow.

We had a cow cake delivery 2 days before the milk started tainting, area rep came to take a sample today. Has anyone experience cow cake causing a taint ?
At this point we can only hope its the cake.
Anything we are missing ?

To make matters worse our 4x4 blew up last week and we have calves that need to go on Saturday.

 

[Princess Pooper]

Can they identify what it is tainted with? Paints can be an issue - have you painted dairy or parlour?

 

[mcollier]

They don't really know.
We have sent bulk test to another company.
Yes we did paint but that was around 7/8 months ago. We move the whole parlour into a different shed.

 

[davidroberts30]

The first year we bottled milk many moons ago we were on addf silage and people commented near enough straight away when we started feeding
Doesn't take much

 

[buffalo_soldier]

Are they on any roots or brassicas?
Is someone chasing the milk through a bit keenly?

 

[westwards]

Are you feeding any Veg waste ?

 

[Stinker]

Evening all hope your week is better than ours.

As the heading says, milk is tainted.

We put in a new parlour 5 months ago all has been going very well until 2 weeks ago when the milk was rejected for been tainted.

First though was it could be the parlour, had the company who installed it back to check it over and everything was fine.

Next port of call was bulk tank, some adjustments were made to the washing system/ chemical balance but still tainted.

Clamp silage test came back fine.
( cows are currently out in the day in on a night )
We didn't have the bales tested as they are good bales but that might be another thing to test.

Sent off a bulk tank test and hopefully will find our more tomorrow.
Individual pot test done tonight will send them off first thing tomorrow.

We had a cow cake delivery 2 days before the milk started tainting, area rep came to take a sample today. Has anyone experience cow cake causing a taint ?
At this point we can only hope its the cake.
Anything we are missing ?

To make matters worse our 4x4 blew up last week and we have calves that need to go on Saturday.

Almost certainly a silage taint. We have had this on and off for as number of years. It wont show up on any tests but it's always the silage. Usually first cut and most likely bales, especially if they are dry. Think its something to do with grass grown over winter and the silage not being acidic enough. I hope you are well insured.

 

[Courier]

Could it be a phenol taint - Jeyes fluid, sheep dip that sort of thing - only needs to have had a whiff 6 months ago for it to come to the fore in milk.

When we were selling milk in waxed cartons it turned out that the box of empty cartons had been under a drum of dip on the delivery van, you could just make out the impression of the drum on the sealed cardboard box the cartons were delivered in. Couldn't smell it but it came out in the taste of the milk.

Also known to come out in the milk in autumn when the cows start using cubicles again which were cleaned down with a phenol disinfectant in May after the cows were turned out to grass . Terrible stuff for tainting milk.

 

[kiwi pom]

What's your milk buyer doing to help? If they are saying its tainted they must have some idea of what it is. Silage taint is the obvious one but surely they'd identify that straight away and tell you?

 

[Steviemoomoo]

We had an issue with milk taint a few years back that went on for around a month. It started a couple of months after changing our cake to a different firm. We checked everything in the parlour and dairy, tried different dairy chemicals and different silage. Still kept failing on taint. Changed the cake back to the old firm and haven't had a problem since.
So if I was you, I'd definitely try a load of cake from somewhere else!

 

[peclova]

Why not smell and/or taste the milk yourself?

Any organoleptic problems are clearly detectable. In your case the taint must be significant if it caused rejection in what I assume must have be a load of milk from other farms as well as yours.

Silage taint has been the pain of my life. I have never got to the bottom of it, but believe, from observation, that it occurs with poorly fermented silage. Either buteric or with an "unstable" dry matter. By "unstable" I mean it is too dry to ferment and not dry enough to prevent a chemical reaction under which complex ethers and/or esters are produced.

In my case the problem is always ether/ester related. It usually occurs with higher butterfat (enabling the taint to bind somewhere along the long fatty acid chain) and when animals are slightly deficient in energy.

The strategy we adopt to overcome the problem (which occurs more commonly in baled silage) is:

1. Unwrap the bales 24 hours before feeding

2. Not feeding it to the cows before milking but only after milking. It only takes minutes for the taint to develop. So if you put feed out before milking and cows start eating it straight away it can taint the milk in less than 20 minutes

And for low yielding animals
3. Milk only 1 time per day (mornings)


If you stop feeding the causal silage and switch to hay the problem disappears within 12 hours.

In the old days when cheap distressed parsnips were readily available to feed, I found they prevented the problem.

It is because of silage taint that some cheesemakers (especially in the Alps) insist on hay and not silage being feed to animals producing milk for them.


If anyone reading this knows anything about the chemistry of ethers/esters in silage I would very much welcome their contacting me.

 

[mcollier]

What's your milk buyer doing to help? If they are saying its tainted they must have some idea of what it is. Silage taint is the obvious one but surely they'd identify that straight away and tell you?

Very supportive, but their tests and our test sent to another company aren't showing anything

 

[mcollier]

Wi

We had an issue with milk taint a few years back that went on for around a month. It started a couple of months after changing our cake to a different firm. We checked everything in the parlour and dairy, tried different dairy chemicals and different silage. Still kept failing on taint. Changed the cake back to the old firm and haven't had a problem since.
So if I was you, I'd definitely try a load of cake from somewhere else!


Will definitely do this thank you.

Ll de

 

[farmer on a bike]

@peclova has written a really good summary of milk taint caused by silage and how to deal with it. We have had similar issues in the past.

This link may also help:

https://foodsafety.foodscience.cornell.edu/sites/foodsafety.foodscience.cornell.edu/files/shared/documents/CU-DFScience-Notes-Milk-Flavor-Defects-Sensory-Eval-04-10.pdf

Why not smell and/or taste the milk yourself?

Any organoleptic problems are clearly detectable. In your case the taint must be significant if it caused rejection in what I assume must have be a load of milk from other farms as well as yours.

Silage taint has been the pain of my life. I have never got to the bottom of it, but believe, from observation, that it occurs with poorly fermented silage. Either buteric or with an "unstable" dry matter. By "unstable" I mean it is too dry to ferment and not dry enough to prevent a chemical reaction under which complex ethers and/or esters are produced.

In my case the problem is always ether/ester related. It usually occurs with higher butterfat (enabling the taint to bind somewhere along the long fatty acid chain) and when animals are slightly deficient in energy.

The strategy we adopt to overcome the problem (which occurs more commonly in baled silage) is:

1. Unwrap the bales 24 hours before feeding

2. Not feeding it to the cows before milking but only after milking. It only takes minutes for the taint to develop. So if you put feed out before milking and cows start eating it straight away it can taint the milk in less than 20 minutes

And for low yielding animals
3. Milk only 1 time per day (mornings)


If you stop feeding the causal silage and switch to hay the problem disappears within 12 hours.

In the old days when cheap distressed parsnips were readily available to feed, I found they prevented the problem.

It is because of silage taint that some cheesemakers (especially in the Alps) insist on hay and not silage being feed to animals producing milk for them.


If anyone reading this knows anything about the chemistry of ethers/esters in silage I would very much welcome their contacting me.

 

[deleted user 837354]

Surely if the silage was bad you would know it just from the smell of it?

Cake would be my thinking purely due to timing. Check the ingredients, are they putting citrus or something in it they were not before? Bigger rapemeal inclusion maybe or even something a bit more exotic like cottonseed etc?

 

[Scholsey]

Very supportive, but their tests and our test sent to another company aren't showing anything

Is your milk still being dumped?!? Have you tried changing the cake/forage for a few days yet?

 

[farmer on a bike]

Not necessarily, In our case silage seemed fine but was very dry, whilst cows were producing very high fat % in late lactation and silage was fed directly before milking. We have had the problem occur in 2 different years, but not in most years.

Surely if the silage was bad you would know it just from the smell of it?

Cake would be my thinking purely due to timing. Check the ingredients, are they putting citrus or something in it they were not before? Bigger rapemeal inclusion maybe or even something a bit more exotic like cottonseed etc?

 

[milkloss]

Had any new leccy poles put upon the farm lately?

 

[Grassman247]

Any members of staff smoking in the new parlour or around the dairy?

New parlours tend to have more vents and air openings on them so may be dragging smoke into the milk.

 

[Stinker]

Not necessarily, In our case silage seemed fine but was very dry, whilst cows were producing very high fat % in late lactation and silage was fed directly before milking. We have had the problem occur in 2 different years, but not in most years.

This was exactly our situation. Some of the best silage we ever made but still caused a taint. It's usually dry but when you open it you get a strange (not unpleasant smell in the back of your nose). The taint in the milk was only obvious when fat % were high. When the milk was heated the taint got even worse. No test other than taste and smell could detect a problem.