Milk Prices

What Determines Your Milk Price?
The mailbox milk price Florida dairymen receive is determined by the "blend" price, the "premium", and marketing costs. Marketing costs include hauling, coop dues, and dairy promotion charges. The blend price is a weighted average of the Class I and Class II federal order minimum prices, the weights being the portion of Florida milk used in each class.

Both Class I and II prices are tied to the BFP (Basic Formula Price). We will discuss the BFP in future issues of this newsletter. The Class I minimum price is the BFP plus a location differential, so the Class I price varies across the four federal orders in Florida. The Class II price is the BFP plus $.30. Since these prices are directly linked to the BFP, the blend has continued to increase as the BFP has increased.

The BFP is the price forecasters try to predict because the federal order prices are linked to it. Recently, a consensus forecast calculated from predictions from 47 milk marketing professionals predicted the BFP would average about $.65 lower for 1997 compared to 1996. Predictions of this kind are always uncertain and the professionals themselves exhibited a wide range of forecasts. The recent drop in cheese prices could move the BFP down quickly.

What is the "Premium?"
The premium is how much more than the blend price (adjusted by the butterfat differential) Florida dairymen receive for their milk before deductions. This is determined by price negotiations between the Florida coops and their customers who buy their milk. It represents a payment to dairymen for services provided by their coop, and the difference between federal order minimum prices and prices warranted by market conditions. Recently market demand has been strong, milk has been short, so the premium has increased to reflect these market conditions.

Services coops provide include supply balancing, quality control, scheduling deliveries when plants want to receive milk, etc. For instance, a plant need only receive as much milk as they need and no more. The coop has to figure out what to do with the extra milk if there is any. Additionally, the coops need to find milk to deliver to local plants if Florida production is less than the coops have promised to deliver. All this occurs at a cost and so a premium is justified.

A large premium has been extracted from the market in the last few months. This has eased in the last month and will likely continue to do so.
- Michael DeLorenzo

Best Methods to Launder Udder Cloths

Washing and drying the udder prior to milking serves several purposes: (1) reduces the number of bacteria in raw milk, (2) is mandated by the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance, and (3) is part of the milking time hygiene program proven to control contagious mastitis. The milking time hygiene program stipulates that a single service towel be used to wash and dry the udders. Traditionally, single service paper towels have been used. However, given the cost and disposal difficulties, many dairy managers have opted to use washable terry towels. What is the best method for laundering the towels? Should bleach be used to help "sterilize" them? Do they need to go in the dryer to be "sterilized"? What is sterilization? Is it different than disinfection?

Sterilization is the removal or killing of all microbes. This can be done by exposure to standard chemicals, gases, and/or heat, possibly in combination. Autoclaving is an example of a procedure that utilizes heat and gases, in this case, steam under pressure. Disinfection means to remove or kill pathogens. In disinfection, some non-pathogens can remain. Disinfection can be accomplished in some cases by simply washing and scrubbing.

It is probably not necessary to sterilize towels between milkings; disinfection should be adequate. How should they be disinfected? Should bleach be added to the towel wash water? Should hot water be used? Should the towels be dried? Should all three of these procedures be added to the laundering steps to further the disinfection process? At Washington State University, a study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of adding bleach, hot water, and forced hot air drying to the laundering process of udder cloth towels. Cows were prepared for milking by spraying tap water on the udders. The udders were then scrubbed dry with terry towels. Normally, an iodine solution is used at the WSU dairy in Pullman to wash udders. However, disinfectant was purposely left out of the udder wash to test towel washing. The design of the study is outlined in Table 1. A commercial detergent was used for each treatment.

The types of mastitis pathogens were identified and counted after bacteriologic culture of towels. Treatment 9 results represent baseline values, i.e., the number and type of pathogens that are present on towels after they are used to wash and dry cows, but before towels were laundered. The experiment was replicated on three days and towels were analyzed separately by groups. The herd had a segregated S. aureus mastitis pen. Group I cows were free of S. aureus mastitis infections and approximately half of Group II cows had S. aureus mastitis. It was surmised that transmission of S. aureus to the towels would be more likely detected if towels were separated by group, where S. aureus "infected" towels might be more concentrated. (See Tables 2 and 3).

Washing clearly reduced the pathogen load as the counts of unwashed towels (Treatment 9) were much higher than the counts of any washed towels (Treatments 1-8, Tables 2 & 3). However, of washed towels, the highest pathogen counts were associated with Treatment 8 laundering methods, cold water wash, without bleach, and no drying (Tables 2 & 3). S. aureus was recovered from Treatment 8, Group II towels (Table 3). There were virtually no differences in pathogen recovery from towels in Treatments 1-7. Thus, Treatment 8 appeared to be the poorest laundering practice in the study, while Treatments 1-7 were equivalent.

The physical act of washing considerably reduced the pathogen load of the towels. Previous studies comparing the laundering practices of hospital linen suggested that hot water wash, use of bleach, and hot air drying tend to reduce the pathogen counts. However, in this study, use of any one of the practices, hot water, bleach, or forced hot air drying, sufficiently reduced the towel pathogen load. Absence of all three practices led to increased pathogen loads on the towels.

What's the bottom line? Results of this study suggest that only one practice, hot water, bleach, or hot air drying, needs to be incorporated into the udder cloth laundering methodology. The method that a dairy manager chooses to use will most probably be dictated by economics. Hot water may be costly and tax the dairy's hot water supply. Bleach adds cost to the procedure and may cause premature towel wear. Clearly there is a cost associated with the purchase and use of a dryer. The results clearly demonstrate that all three practices need not be used to launder towels. Only one practice, use of bleach, washing in hot water, or hot air drying, need to be used. Perhaps the incorporation of two practices would add a margin of safety to ensure that udder cloths are sufficiently disinfected.
- Larry Fox, WSU Vet. Med.

Youth

The fall brings the start of many exciting and fun filled opportunities to youth involved in the 4-H dairy program. County clubs are being organized, shows in the northern part of the state are beginning and students are picking out their next club project calf.

The fall also brings to closure another season of dairy judging events. Florida 4-Hers have represented us well this year at national and regional contests with the North American contest in Louisville, KY being the only one left. Jerri Giesy, Mary Thomas, Ben Butler and Travis Larson traveled to Harrisburg, PA to compete in the All-American contest. They were 2nd in reasons and 2nd overall with Jerri taking top honors in reasons.

The team of Tiffany Parker, Jacob Larson, Tommy McKeen and Jenny Hanson traveled to Memphis, TN to compete in the Mid-South Regionals in late September. This young team came home victorious being high team in Brown Swiss, Holsteins, reasons and overall. Tiffany was high in reasons, followed by Jacob (2nd), Tommy (3rd) and Jenny (5th).

The national 4-H dairy judging contest was held October 2, 1996 in Madison, WI in conjunction with the World Dairy Expo. The team of Suzanne Gee, Ryan Holcomb, Travis Larson and Ben Butler brought distinction to themselves and the program by placing 1st in reasons and 2nd overall. Suzanne was the 2nd high individual in the contest.

The future looks bright for many years to come as our intermediate youth traveled to the South Alabama State Fair and competed with six other teams. This group of 14- and 15-year olds had a great day, placing 1st in reasons and high team overall.

If you get Hoard's Dairymen, I would encourage you to look at page 674 at the editorial comments in the October 10th issue. There is an interesting article concerning the value of judging programs. Hoard's quote survey results of nearly 1300 former judging team members where more than 70% rated judging as highly valuable in exposing them to opportunities and helping them do well in their chosen profession.

The support of the 4-H program by Florida dairymen has and will continue to make a tremendous impact on Florida youth. The future of the Florida dairy industry will be impacted by this group of highly motivated, well educated, young adults.
- James Umphrey

The New DHIA System

With the ever changing technology, DHIA has been able to adjust to the needs of its producers and industry. This continuing restructing provides flexibility within the DHIA system without jeopardizing its standards. Constant demands for a user-friendly service has produced a new set of "Uniform Procedures and Codes of Ethics." These procedures include items such as how to weigh and sample milk, and a uniformity of calculation of records and identification of animals.

Records from testing plans not traditionally used in genetic evaluations will now be included providing they meet minimum qualifications. To make information available to record-users about how data is collected on the farm, DHIA has developed "Herd and Cow Profile." Profiles are a uniform, standardized barometer of the data collected. These profiles will allow dairy producers to document the integrity and credibility of their herd record. These profiles will be openly available to record-users on a request basis. By openly and consistenly providing this information to record users, some self-policing will be introduced. These policies called "The Code of Ethics" is a standard expected of all DHIA participants. This new DHIA System is expected to be implemented early in 1997. If you have any questions or require more information about this please contact your DHIA personnel.
- Ron McCuddy

Feed Costs

First of all, thanks to readers of The Florida Dairy Business for comments on our efforts to track milk and feed prices. We consider these comments and will incorporate the ideas and wisdom of producers into future issues when appropriate. We have started with this issue!

Feed prices are starting down, and with milk prices continuing to rise (although slower), the Florida Milk to Feed Price Ratio continues up. Milk prices will likely ease in following months. It will be interesting to monitor whether feed prices or milk prices soften more quickly. Stay tuned to our Florida price ratio.

We have reset the scale for the Florida Milk to Feed Price Ratio. Comments from readers questioned whether basing the ratio on a diet for a cow milking 75 lb. was representative for Florida dairies. We went back to a study that calculated lactation curves based on Florida DHIA test day data. We found that at 150 days in milk, daily yield averaged 60 lb. per day. This was an average of 1st and greater lactation cows. The DHI sample average may be slightly higher than the true state average, but it is based on real data from real Florida dairy cows.