Jumping the Moon Dairy - the next chapter

[CntryBoy777]

Hip-Hip-Hooray!!!.....
It certainly has been an eventful Journey and am so Happy for the Reward of all your hard toil, sweat, blood, tears, and endless nights of lost sleep to get to this Point. Though there may be some challenges ahead....I surely wish ya extremely Smooth Sailing for a long while to come.....

 

[HomeOnTheRange]

Huge CONGRATS on the dairy!

 

[Baymule]

Take a picture of your first bottle of milk! Then frame it and hang it on the wall. You have worked long and hard on this, congratulations.

 

[babsbag]

Today I had training for the testing I have to do to make sure that there are no traces off Penicillin in my milk. It isn't enough to swear on a stack of Bibles and on the life of my first born, I have to prove it.

OMG...anyone that thinks that there is any Pen in our commercial milk supply has not been around a processing plant. Every batch of milk I pasteurize has to be tested...ok. But before that actual test I have to run a calibration check on the machine, then run a positive and negative control test and then run the real deal. If by some chance I do get a positive reading I have to run the control tests over and then run two more samples through the testing. If it still comes up positive I can choose to throw the milk away or send a sample out to a confirming lab for testing. Either way I would have to fill out a mile long form and notify the CDFA that I had a positive test. It also stores the results of the positive test in the machine which gets checked every 3 months. Good golly, I didn't know owning a dairy meant Chemistry 101 all over again.

My little 1 cu. ft. refrigerator has two thermometers in it, one for each shelf, they are literally 4" apart. The thermometer has to be checked against a reference thermometer once a year but every day I have to log what the temp is. The little tiny freezer too, but it only has one thermometer. It is just crazy.

So the moral of this story, don't use any Pen or beta lactam family drugs on the goats. They are doing a pilot program testing for tetracycline and they may add sulfa at some point. This is the FDA, not just my state so technically all milk processing plants should be doing this, but I bet that they aren't.

 

[Bruce]

I now own a certified Grade A dairy.

My little 1 cu. ft. refrigerator has two thermometers in it, one for each shelf, they are literally 4" apart. The thermometer has to be checked against a reference thermometer once a year but every day I have to log what the temp is. The little tiny freezer too, but it only has one thermometer. It is just crazy.

And every time you open the door, the temp raises a bit while you are reading the thermometers. Don't tell them I said this but I'm surprised they don't force you to put in remote reading thermometers.

 

[babsbag]

They didn't tell me to buy remote but I did.

 

[misfitmorgan]

Finally caught up!!!

Wow Babs you have been super busy. Congrats on your dairy
I hope things go smoothly and possibly more restfully from here on out!

 

[Wehner Homestead]

I've read your whole journal on your dairy! Very neat. Now I'm wondering if that's what I should do?? I need to be home more with my medical needs kiddo but who do I get to care for things if she's in the hospital?? I'd need to have a least one trained employee to run things with almost no notice...if I go this route, a visit is definitely in the works. I'll help you and see how you run things!!

 

[misfitmorgan]

One of the first steps is make sure there is a market in your area or milk trucks come to your area. In our area there is not a big enough market and no milk trucks come this way, not for goat's milk. We thought about buying a milk truck too but they are way way way way expensive like 1/4 of a million expensive.

 

[Wehner Homestead]

There's a demand! We actually aren't far from Goat Milk Stuff. They have a website.