6. Units are Properly Removed

Milking is completed when the available milk is fully harvested. Undermilking occurs when all the milk is not removed ("not milked out") and overmilking occurs when teatcups are attached to teats but milk is not flowing. The biggest danger of undermilking is financial. The biggest danger of overmilking is damage to teat ends resulting in mastitis. A Danish experiment demonstrated that when the threshold setting on the ATO (automatic take off) was raised from .44 to .90 lb/minutes the average unit on-time was reduced by 0.5 minutes and teat condition improved. Additional time savings can be gained by changing the detacher delay time after the threshold is reached from 20-30 sec to 10 seconds. To avoid milk yield loss, changes in detacher delays should be made gradually in three second intervals. High threshold settings and short detacher delays will apply to 3X herds with a good cow prep, resulting in improved teat condition and milking speed.

 The completeness of milk-out can be estimated by occasionally checking the amount of milk that can be hand stripped from a cow after milking is completed. Left-over milk that can be expressed by hand milking is termed strip-yield. Cows can be considered to be fully "milked out" if <0.20 liters of milk per quarter can be hand stripped post-milking. Hand stripping should not be practiced routinely.

7. Cows are Managed Post-Milking

Post-milking teat antisepsis was initially developed to reduce the transmission of contagious mastitis pathogens and has been widely accepted.  To evaluate the adequacy of teat spraying, a paper towel can be wrapped around the teat after dipping. A properly dipped teat will have teat dip completely around the towel. Finally, the last step in an effective milking routine is to ensure that the cows remain standing for at least 30 minutes after milking is completed. Most producers provide fresh feed to encourage this behavior.