[SOUND] We're in the milking parlor right now,
in the process of milking. This is Wes Jarrell, the other proprietor of Prairie Fruits Farm. We met Leslie, his wife, earlier. So we're going through the milking process right now. Again, thank you, Wes, for having us. >> Thanks for coming. >> And sharing this experience with us. So our milker today is Courtney Tilligen, she's a student at the University of Illinois. We're going to watch the milking process now and see how they do it. >> They have a holding area in the back and we get them into that area. Then they walk up a ramp and down the platform to the end. We feed them grain on sand, so they're lured into their head locks. Once they get in, their heads are locked in place so they can't get back out. We first dip each teat in iodine and lanoline, and that sanitizes the surface of the teat. We have to leave that on for at least 30 seconds, after which time we use one paper towel per goat to remove the excess iodine on the teat. Courtney comes by and strips out some milk. We have a strip cup that lets us look at the quality of the milk and make sure that it's not got any imperfections in it. It also cleans the teat opening. So now Courtney's turned on the vacuum system and we're hooking up alternate goats. We've found that in designing the system that we wanted to do it so one person could just keep steadily busy with the goats. And we could keep track of the milking so we don't over milk. There's time for the goats to finish the grain, but they're not standing around too long. It takes between one and two minutes usually on each goat to milk out. Right now we're milking about four rounds of the older goats. And then we have one round of the Nigerian goats and the first-year goats that take some extra time and attention. So we milk at 5:30 AM and 5:00 PM most of the time. We have gone to once a day milking right at the end of the lactation in the fall, in October, well, November, December. Components go up in the milk but the volume goes down significantly, so we've pretty well stuck to twice a day, even late in the season. >> How much mastitis do you have? I don't think you have very much here. >> We don't think we have any that we detected. There was none in the first DHI samples that were about two-thirds of these goats were fresh last month when we did DHI, and we didn't have any. If we get a high number, we take a sterile milk sample and analyze it on Petri plate testers and make sure there's no pathogenic bacteria in the system. And if there are, then we treat the doe and take her off the line, but if it's not, we just try to be a little more sensitive about it. Some of the does just naturally are always higher and some are always lower. But clinical mastitis, we see almost none at all. Then once the full milk is not visible in the lines, we move it to the next goat. And once that's done, we check to make sure that they haven't refilled, which they'll do. And if they have, we put them back on for a few seconds to empty that. And then we pull them off completely. At that point, we go back down the line, dip them in the iodine solution again from a different container. And leave that iodine on them so that when they go back into the barn, they're less likely to pick up any contaminants that could invade the teat and the udder and cause mastitis or infections. And then we open the headlocks and they go back to the barn. After we've finished milking, we need to clean the system, so we have what's called a clean in place, or a CIP setup. We hook the inflations up to those black cups, which are called jetters. That completes a circuit so that we can fill a sink in the milk house with solution and then circulate that solution through a pipeline to clean it all up, and through the inflations themselves. The first step is just a one-way rinse to flush out excess milk. The second step is about 160-degree hot detergent that circulates through the lines for 10 minutes to get rid of a lot of the organic material that might otherwise hang out. And the third step is a lukewarm acid, sulfuric acid, that gets rid of milk stone, which is calcium caseinate, or calcium protein precipitate that can happen in the lines. Then we're done for the evening, that's all automatic. After that, one hour before we start milking, the system kicks on and circulates a sanitizer solution through it for five minutes. That way, we're sure when we start, we should start with a completely clean system. [SOUND] [SOUND]