How long after a does freshens do you NOT drink the milk? I have 6 does that range from 12 to 5 days fresh. My milk seems to get a funny taste after 2 days in the fridge... I worked on a cow dairy for 8 years and after 3-5 days we taked the milk.. granated we milked over 300 head and i only have 6 LOL...
Thanks
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I feel pretty confident that bleach on something non-porous like milking equipment does rinse off, but with something porous like a filter, that would bother me because I'm not sure how well you could ever get it truly rinsed out. When I took my food safety class to become a food handler so I could teach cooking classes, they said that you have to sanitize with either heat or chemicals, so I always go with heat whenever possible, such as boiling cheesecloth.
Bacteria can only become resistant to something if there isn't a 100% kill rate because it is the survivors that are resistant. Obviously with boiling there are no survivors, and there probably is with bleach too, so nothing has a chance to become resistant.
Although I agree with Deborah that bleach residue isn't nice, we do use it here. Actually, as part of the cleaning process in our commercial cheese-making, all equipment that comes in contact with the milk & cheese (other than the actual cheese packaging) is required to be sanitized in a dilute bleach solution. It's a food equipment grade bleach that we use, not just household stuff. There isn't really an alternative to bleach for the sanitizing except possibly other unpleasant chemicals.
And when I took my cheese-making course at the Western Dairy Center we were told that milk actually neutralizes bleach. I kind of wish I understood how this works, but in the meantime I just go with it.
I also wonder why there doesn't seem to be any concern about bacteria becoming resistant to bleach. Maybe bleach is just so nasty that it's unlikely to happen? Oh well, bleach is another one of the trade-offs of things I don't really like doing but have to in order to have a business.
DHI considers anything less than 4 days to not be "milk." We start using milk at 4 days and have never noticed any issues with flavor.
Mastitis milk can taste salty. I actually drank milk from a goat with mastitis -- had it on cereal and was thinking the cereal was salty, then realized later that day that the goat had mastitis.
If it is the filter, you might want to look into switching to disposable. There will be bleach residue left in it, which I personally wouldn't want in my milk. You can also kill bacteria by boiling.
Hubby says the fresh milk tastes great! I really think its the filter thing... we shall see....
There can be a colostrum flavour to the milk, but it should be there immediately after milking, not showing up after a couple of days in the fridge. Most of my does lose the colostrum flavour after a couple of days, but I did have one whose milk tasted colostrum-y for 2 weeks.
I've heard that sub-clinical mastitis can also show up as an off-flavour in milk but show no other symptoms, however I would expect that to be in the milk immediately too, not after two days.
I hope bleaching the filter fixes the issue for you.
I mean how long after the does freshens do you "dump" the milk or feed it to the babies or what ever you do with it. At the cow dairy we "tanked" it after 3-5 days after it looked white. Will keeping ans fridge the milk at 12 days fresh make it get funky? Someone told me they dump it for 2 weeks! I didn't wait that long last year and didn't get the funky milk. I am bleaching everything now so I will see if that was the problem. I only milk in a stainless steel milk bucket and store in clean glass jars. The thing I think may be doing it is the filter. Its a reusable coffee filter. It is sitting in bleach now...
I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're asking, and I think there might be a typo in your post. What did you do with the milk after 3-5 days at the cow dairy?
You can drink milk from a goat that freshened today, but it's colostrum, rather than milk. In some cultures, people do this regularly. Actually, they sell colostrum in health food stores in California.
As far as how long you can store it in the frig -- until it goes bad and grows mold and smells like you don't want to use it. If it hasn't been pasteurized, it will actually turn into cheese on its own if you leave it in there long enough. (You don't have to ask me how I know this :) Anyway, if the milk starts to taste funky or goaty after two days, you need to work on hygiene during milking. Clean the udder and put a few squirts of milk into a strip cup. Then strain it ASAP after milking and chill it.