Dairy farming for quality

Erika, Bertalanné Várallyay – Noémi, Varga – Lajos, Salamon

Under Hungarian conditions a prosperous dairy farm has been scrutinised by changing conditions of animal care, feeding, milking technology, by observing the number of somatic cells in the milk and its effect on quality and on the loss of income during the lactation period of 305 days. The aim of the study was the survey of conditions influencing the quality of milk, which has to be observed under the conditions of the EU. Several categories of milk quality, which have been valid earlier, should be suppressed because only „Extra” category will be admitted to be used for human consumption in the EU.

The animal stock examined has been over the average, which means that if the quality declined the loss of income was considerable during the same lactation period of individual cows. The yield of one single cow being 7500 kg per lactation, wich means an income of more than half a million Ft (HUF), so the decline of quality may cause 20 to 200 thousand HUF loss per individual cow. The higher the productivity of the cow, the larger losses are expected. The 80% of the stock is able to produce the extra quality of milk. We ought to be careful to keep the ratio of defective animals as low as possible in order to maintain the average number of somatic cells in the milk below the critical 400 thousand.

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