05/22/2026
Well I’ve been quiet on here for a few days which means it’s been crazy in real life! Just a short (short as possible) summary and some exciting news!!!!
First off I made the very difficult decision to sell Zennie, the cow I bought in January. She was a lovely cow, calm, fit right in, no trouble at all. But I kept noticing an off flavor to her milk. The California Mastitis Test (CMT) was clear along with the Accumast mastitis culture plate. Her coliform count and standard plate counts (the tests that I do on all of the milk weekly) were really good. I sent her milk to a lab to check somatic cell count (indicator of udder health), milk urea nitrogen (MUN, indicator of feed efficiency), and components (protein and fat) and everything checked out good. While working with a dairy nutritionist/consultant I switched her feed 4 times since February with no change. In consulting with everyone I could think of the only thing we could come up with is high lipase activity in her milk. Lipase is present in all milk and helps to break down the fat so it’s easier for a calf to digest. But too much lipase causes the fat to break down too rapidly and gives an off flavor. This is a genetic thing and not related to management, the only way to “fix” it is to scald the milk (pasteurize it) as soon as it comes in the house because that would halt the lipase from doing its thing. As hard as it was I had to make the decision to remove her from the herd because her milk was not up to the flavor standards I intend to keep. Zennie is happy in her new home raising calves.
Then my dad had a medical event that landed him in the hospital for several days. I needed to take the kids to go visit him but that’s very difficult to do when milk cows are life. Thanks once again to Tammi Geisert-Eberle for stepping in and taking such good care of the cows so we could go on a road trip!!! And road trip we did!
While the kids were visiting dad, and since I was in the “neighborhood” I made the a trek all the way down the entirety of I-25 through Colorado to pick up two very special items! One…. another heifer to replace Zennie. She is from the same place I bought Honey from last year. She still needs a name and I haven’t even gotten a proper picture of her yet. She is getting used to coming in the barn and will do great!
And the other item…… drum roll please……
A 30 gallon bulk chill tank!!!!! After dreaming about a bulk tank for a long time it finally happened!!!! From a water bath in coolers with ice, to electric cooler with a salt brine, then propylene glycol water bath in a chest freezer, I’ve been constantly upgrading the milk chilling. But it seemed like every time I made improvements very shortly I’d have more milk than the system could handle. Maze is currently making 7 gallons a day and that was the last straw for the chest freezer.
The bulk tank has been working wonderfully to chill the milk to under 40 degrees in about 30-40 minutes!!!! Milk is filtered directly from the milk bucket into the tank which has cut out the 15 minutes it was taking me to filter milk into the jars. The tank holds the milk at a chilly 33 degrees and the agitator stirs the milk every 15 minutes. Following milk safety standards I can put 3 milkings in the tank before needing to bottle milk and clean the tank. I’m pretty sure it will be a while before I overwhelm this beauty, like 4 additional cows hahahaha.
I didn’t mean to leave a cliffhanger, my dad was discharged from the hospital the day before our visit and is doing very well! He even came to visit us this week!
Thank you so much for everyone who has supported this crazy milk thing!!!! Every gallon of milk you buy helps us to pay bills and to make improvements so we can continue to be able to share yummy raw milk with all of you. 🥰
