Dairy farming

Dairy farming

Dairy farming could be a category of agriculture for semipermanent production of milk, that is processed (either on the farm or at a dairy farm plant, either of which can be referred to as a dairy) for ultimate sale of a foodstuff.

Common species

Although any craniate will turn out milk, commercial dairy farms are typically one-species enterprises. In developed countries, dairy farms typically consist of high producing dairy cows. Other species employed in industrial farming embrace goats, sheep, and camels. In Italy, donkey dairies ar growing in quality to provide another milk supply for human infants.

·        History

Milking cattle in ancient Egypt

While cows were domesticated as early as eleven,000 years ago as a food source and as beasts of burden, the earliest evidence of using domesticated cows for dairy production is the seventh millennium BC - the early Neolithic era - in northwestern Anatolia. Dairy farming developed elsewhere within the world in ensuant centuries: the sixth millennium B.C. in jap Europe, the fifth millennium BC in Africa, and the fourth millennium BC in Britain and Northern Europe.

In the last century just about larger farms specialising in farm alone have emerged. Large scale dairy farming is only viable where either a large amount of milk is required for production of more durable dairy products such as cheese, butter, etc. or there's a considerable market of individuals with money to shop for milk, but no cows of their own. In the 1800s von Thünen argued that there was a couple of 100-mile radius close a town wherever such contemporary milk offer was economically viable.

·        History of milk preservation methods

Cool temperature has been the most technique by that milk freshness has been extended. When windmills and well pumps were fictitious, one of their first uses on the farm, besides providing water for animals themselves, was for cooling milk, to extend its storage life, until it would be transported to the town market.

The naturally cold underground water would be continuously pumped into a cooling tub or vat. Tall, ten-gallon metal containers stuffed with freshly obtained milk, which is naturally warm, were placed in this cooling bath. This technique of milk cooling was fashionable before the arrival of electricity and refrigeration.

·        Refrigeration

When refrigeration 1st arrived (the nineteenth century) the instrumentation was at first wont to cool cans of milk, which were filled by hand milking. These cans were placed into a cooled water bath to remove heat and keep them cool until they were able to be transported to a collection facility. As a lot of machine-driven ways were developed for gathering milk, hand milking was replaced and, as a result, the milk can was replaced by a bulk milk cooler. 'Ice banks' were the primary variety of bulk milk cooler. This was a double wall vessel with evaporator coils and water settled between the walls at all-time low and sides of the tank. A small refrigeration mechanical device was wont to take away heat from the evaporator coils. Ice eventually builds up round the coils, until it reaches a thickness of about three inches surrounding each pipe, and the cooling system shuts off. When the milking operation starts, only the milk agitator and the water circulation pump, which flows water across the ice and the steel walls of the tank, are needed to reduce the incoming milk to a temperature below five degrees.

·        Milking operation

Milking machines are held in place automatically by a vacuum system that draws the ambient air pressure down from 15 to 21 pounds per square inch (100 to 140 kPa) of vacuum. The vacuum is additionally wont to elevate milk vertically through little diameter hoses, into the receiving will. A milk pump attracts the milk from the receiving will through massive diameter stainless-steel piping, through the plate cooler, then into a refrigerated bulk tank.

Milk is extracted from the cow's mammary gland by versatile rubber sheaths called liners or inflations that area unit enclosed by a rigid air chamber. A rhythmic flow of close air and vacuum is applied to the inflation's air chamber throughout the milking method. When close air is allowed to enter the chamber, the vacuum within the inflation causes the inflation to collapse round the cow's mamilla, squeezing the milk out of teat in a similar fashion as a baby calf's mouth massaging the tit.

·        Management of the herd

The dairy industry is a constantly evolving business. Management practices change with new technology and regulations that move the industry toward increased economic and environmental sustainability. Management methods may loosely be divided into intensive and in depth systems. Extensive systems operate supported an occasional input and low output philosophy, where intensive systems adopt a high input high output philosophy. These philosophies as well as available technologies, local regulations, and environmental conditions manifest in different management of nutrition, housing, health, reproduction and waste.

·        Housing Systems

Dairy cattle housing systems vary greatly throughout the globe betting on the climate, dairy size, and feeding strategies. Housing should offer access to feed, water and protection from relevant environmental conditions. One obvious issue for humanely housing cattle is temperature extremes. Heat stress will decrease fertility and milk production in bovine. Providing shade could be a quite common technique for reducing heat stress. Barns might also incorporate fans or tunnel ventilation into the design of the barn structure. Overly cold conditions, while rarely deadly for cattle, cause increases in maintenance energy requirements and thus increased feed intake and decreased milk production. During the winter months,

·        Milking Systems

Life on a dairy revolves round the milking parlor. Each wet cow can visit the parlor a minimum of double every day to be milked. An incredible quantity of engineering has gone into coming up with milking parlors and milking machines. Efficiency is crucial; each second saved whereas milking one cow adds up to hours over the full herd.