On Farm Lab Testing
There is a bit of debate amongst herdshare farmers on the subject of on farm testing. Some thing that it’s pivotal to their quality and their owners security. Others believe that they can know their quality but simply knowing their cows. Or that third party testing is better than doing it themselves.
I’m not here necessarily to debate with other farmers or convince them that they need to test at home. I wouldn’t even say that other farms have poor quality milk just because they don’t test on the farm. I don’t think that at all! I think you can have high quality, low risk milk without testing every time you bottle. Rather, I am writing this to explain to our owners and others that may be interested in why we choose to have an on farm lab.
Truly, a trained lab tech could perform better test than I can. I wouldn’t think that I could rival someone who really knows what they’re doing. This is why we do opt for third party testing monthly as well as our on farm testing.
Our third party testing, DHI, tests each cow individually. Through this, we are able to know her somatic cell count at that time, how many pounds of milk she gives, and other specific things we can test for. Though our third party testing, we also check each cow for the A1?A2 proteins in their milk. We are aiming to be a completely A2 A2 herd. We’re not quite there yet due to the Holstein breed, but we are continuing to breed with Jersey bulls so we up our chances of having more A2 A2 cows. We also pregnancy test each cow through her milk. Milk pregnancy test are highly accurate post 35 days breeding. We keep an eye on when a cow was bred by our bull or signs of her going into heat, then check her at the proper time to get a confirmation on whether or not she’s pregnant and guess her due date from there. Through our DHI testing, we check for Johne’s Disease in our cows as well. Johne’s is similar to Crohn’s Disease in humans. While there is no direct causation between drinking milk from a Johne’s cow and someone getting Crohn’s, the correlation is enough to warrant most all raw milk/herdshare farmers to assure that their cows are free from Johne’s. We can test our bulk tank for bacteria counts and some pathogens as well.
We personally do on farm testing as a way we can assure ourselves of quality and keep us constantly striving to do better. If you’ve read other blogs or our about page or have talked to us about our past, you know we were not just raw milk hesitant but vehemently anti raw milk. When I brought the idea of herdshares to my dad, he said he would only do it if he could be assured that the milk is safe. When we learned of on farm lab testing, he said that we would need to test every batch we bottled. So that is exactly what we do.
When we bottle our milk, we always prep and bottle one extra bottle for testing. It is washed, sanitized, and filled the exact same as the milk we give to our herdshare owners. We do this so that we know that we’re testing the same milk that is going out to our owners.
We test on farm for coliform and aerobic bacteria count. Our coliform also can show general E. coli strains. We use Charm test because they are easy to use and are cost effective. We have an incubator that is always set to 90 degrees. The coliform test is a straight milk test that takes 24 hours to incubate. The aerobic bacteria count is a 1 to 10 milk dilution that takes 48 hours to incubate. The Raw Milk Institute’s standards for their listed farmers is to have a coliform test of less than 10 and an aerobic bacteria count of less than 50 (accounting for the dilution, it would be less than 5,000). Since we have the goal of being listed with RawMI, we have set these standards as our goals as well.
Coliforms are a large collection of different bacteria. They are unlikely to cause illness and are often not harmful. We do, however, want to keep them at a certain threshold as high coliform counts may indicate that harmful bacteria may be present in milk. The aerobic bacteria count is that bacteria that can survive and grow in an oxygenated enviroment. We don’t want an aerobic bacteria count of 0 thus there being a higher threshold for the aerobic bacteria count. The aerobic bacteria includes all the good bacteria too like probiotics that we really want from our raw milk! A too low of an aerobic bacteria count could mean over sanitation. While we want low risk milk, we don’t want to kill off the probiotics nor do we want to have sanitation chemicals in our milk.
Truthfully, we don’t always get within the very strict RawMI limits. Very often our aerobic bacteria count is low, but sometimes we have a spike in coliform counts. As stated above, coliforms do not often indicate harmful pathogens. Rather, it gives a better clue into how long the milk will last and the overall cleanliness of our operation. For example, we had our coliforms spike once and it was due to a milker not fully shutting off and sucking air in from the outside. Once we replaced the necessary part, our coliforms dropped back within range.
Our on farm lab testing is constant feed back. We currently bottle every other day so the 24 and 48 hour tests give us what we need to know for the very next milking. If we see a spike in a number, we immediately trouble shoot. If we see our numbers are down, we know that whatever we did last time was right and we’re on a good path. Our testing has shaped our practices. We do extra washes of the milk line, break down the milkers for regular cleaning, replace parts more frequently, assure fast and adequate cooling, and more. While there are no government regulations in Michigan for herdshare farms, on farm testing keeps us accountable to ourselves and our owners. Since we strive to hit RawMI standards, we are likely more rigorous than a regulation would be plus we don’t have the state poking their nose in our food rights.
In conclusion, while on farm lab testing is not a requirement for all herdshare or raw milk farmers, it is an added source of accountability. We at MarGro Farms LLC appreciate the constant feedback that on farm testing gives us. It helps us to constantly strive to be better for our herdshare owners. It also give us as former raw milk critics peace of mind. On farm lab testing in addition to third party testing is one of the many ways we work to bring our owners our best and high quality, low risk fresh, unprocessed whole milk.
