Cows like consistency. Milk at the same time each day

Follow the same routine each milking.

1  Wash your hands. Dirty hands spread disease

2  Wear Nitrile Milking Gloves to reduce the spread of mastitis causing germs
from your hands. The small cracks and crevices in human hands harbor a lot
of bacteria including contagious Staph Aureus.

3  Sanitize your milking machine with a chlorinated sanitizing solution just
before you milk.

4  Bring the Cow into a calm stress free milking environment. Stress,
such as loud noise inhibits milk let down.

5  Fore Strip. Hand milk 1 or 2 squirts from each teat onto the black screen of
a strip cup. Look for clots, clumps, blood, or signs of abnormal milk. Fore
stripping promotes milk letdown & faster milkout

6  Teat Prep & Sanitation. The purpose of this step is to reduce the amount of
bacteria on teat skin and promote milk let down

   Teat Wipes; Wipe and massage each teat for 15 seconds. Use one wipe per
cow or one per teat if they are visibly dirty. Teats will dry in a few
seconds due to the alcohol in the wipes

   Pre Dipping; PreDip with Teat Kote 10/lll. Wait 30 seconds, then dry off
with a paper or cloth towel. Use one clean towel per cow. Do not re-use the
towel as this may spread disease from one cow to the next. 

 7  The goal is to milk clean, dry teats. Wet udders are a good conduit for bad
bacteria and mastitis (udder infections). Wet udders may drip down to the
top of the liner and if the liner slips it will suck in the dirty water.
Limit water use on the udder.

8  Apply the milker within one minute of the beginning of teat preparation.
This maximizes the animals natural milk let down (oxytocin), speeds up milk
flow, and reduces the machine on time. Let the vacuum pull the milker onto
the teat.

DO NOT force the teat into the liner. It only needs to go in about 1/2 inch.

9  Adjust milking unit so it hangs square with out twisting the teats. A little
forward tension will provide faster milkout.

10  The cow is finished milking when the large volume of milk flow drops off to
a trickle. You can see the milk flowing in the clear milk hose. Milk out
time should be than 5 to 10 minutes on most cows. Shut off the inline valve,
then gently pull the milker unit down off the teats.

11  Animals that were hard to milk by hand will take longer to milk with a machine. Most healthy udders will shrink significantly when milked out…. Except for the first few days when the udder has a lot of swelling (edema). Usually the swelling leaves within a few days and then the udder should shrink when milked out. Dynamint udder cream will help reduce swelling if used in the first few days after calving. 

12  Should you post strip? No! Research has shown that post stripping may cause more harm than benefit. It may train the cow to hold back some milk and your hands will contaminate the teat skin at a vulnerable time when the Keratin teat end seal is open. If the cow is not milking out properly, then you may need to adjust the way the milker is hanging, adjust the pulsator or vacuum level, or have your milking machine checked for proper operation.  

13   Post dip for Teat disinfection. Post dipping sanitizes the teat skin including the opening at the bottom of the teat. Post dipping has been proven to dramatically reduce cases of udder infections. Post Dip with AstroTek, Teat Kote 10/lll, or DermaSept protocol tested teat dips. Use the Hamby Dairy Supply dip cup provided with your milking machine. This non-return style dip cup provides a fresh dose of teat dip for each teat. For temperatures below 25 degrees, DermaSept is recommended because it will not freeze.  

14  It is important to keep the dairy cow standing for a while after milking. This will give some time for the wax like seal of the teat orifice to seal back up. A good solution is to have a rack of fresh hay and fresh water available right after they exit the milking parlor.

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