First Milk Home

For the last four years Chris and Liz Best have produced the best quality milk in Gloucestershire and won our regional quality milk award. That’s a hard enough achievement in itself, of course, but now Liz has gone one better and scooped the ultimate prize – First Milk’s national milk quality award! That takes some doing in itself, but the achievement is even more impressive given that her 65 cows are organic! She won with a Bactoscan result of 7 and a Somatic Cell Count of 62.

Farming at Pool House farm, Leighterton, she puts her success largely down to consistency of people and milking routine, keeping everything clean at all times and having stress free cows. Her routine consists of testing the fore milk, washing the teats with warm water, drying them with a paper towel, wiping with a Tiesen udder wipe before attaching the clusters ,and then spraying them with an iodine teat spray afterwards. Between cows the clusters are also washed with the udder wash hose. The routine may sound lengthy, but it isn’t, she insists, and actually helps milk let down and milking speed. She also believes in wearing disposable gloves at all times. She does most of the milking herself as her husband Chris has a job off farm, but is occasionally helped by daughter Caroline or son Simon.

Ranked in order she puts the priorities as:
1) Being consistent in the milking routine and keeping on top of everything;
2) Being vigilant, and reacting to small changes before they get out of hand (for example increases in Bactoscans);
3) Having stress free cows (her cows are on mats and straw in the cubicle shed);
4) Having a good drying-off routine and sticking to it;
5) Keeping everything clean (her cows rarely mess in the parlour, for instance);
6) Keeping the parlour in order (it is serviced every year by Genus with the liners changed every five months);
7) Breeding from the right cows.

The culling rate of below 10% is well below the national average, and cows are rarely ever culled for mastitis, she says. Cell counts don’t seem to increase as the cows get older, as the udders are kept healthy.

“We have always had low cell counts, and when we turned organic in 2002 people said we would never keep them low. But we have. We never thought we would win the national award, especially being organic, but we’re obviously delighted,” she said.