Seventh deliverable out now

The seventh deliverable has been completed and published. It is the first deliverable of work package six, ‘Effectiveness of Automatic Cleaning of Udder and Teats and Effects of Hygiene Management’. The report is entitled 'Protocol for evaluation of teat cleaning systems’.

The report describes different methods that can be used to evaluate mechanised teat cleaning devices that are in operation in automatic milking systems. Five methods were studied: visual inspection, sediment test on teat swabs, determination of total bacterial counts and ATP in teat swabs and artificial contamination of teats with a cobalt solution. The first four methods were found to be effective for scoring teat hygiene and a protocol has been designed to apply these in further studies to evaluate the teat cleaning efficiency of automatic milking systems. The fifth method is currently under further investigation before it can be used for the evaluations.

Message date: September 10, 2002